


Climber's Code

by Lt_Zoe_Jebkanto



Series: The Bonds Between Us [11]
Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: A bit of humour (I hope), Adventure, Drama, F/M, Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-10
Updated: 2015-03-06
Packaged: 2018-02-24 20:00:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2594597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lt_Zoe_Jebkanto/pseuds/Lt_Zoe_Jebkanto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a lot more at stake than the results of what started as a casual little wager between Jonathan and Erika...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MeredithBrody](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeredithBrody/gifts), [Eireann](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eireann/gifts).



> This story takes place as the Romulan War looms, a few weeks after "As Easy As Breathing".

Climbers’ Code

Chapter One

 

28 March, 2155  
Enterprise NX02  
Zero seven hundred hours, thirty minutes

Nobody talked much about the danger anymore. 

It was such a familiar presence since leaving Jupiter Station that it hardly raised more than casual comment. It was waiting out there, days ahead or weeks, perhaps as much as months, but sooner or later the Romulans were going to launch another attack.

Mostly the odds were on sooner. 

Nobody talked much about it, except Jonathan Archer.

It seemed the captain was talking to everybody. Mostly about preparations. 

Malcolm was running extra weapons practices and security drills. Trip was checking and re-checking Jupiter Station’s latest upgrades to the ship’s engines, then running simulations on a few improvements of his own. Hoshi was scanning every possible frequency and band width for rumors or for snatches of Romulan dialects to upload into the universal translator. Travis was plotting piloting maneuvers for attacks, evasions and retreats. Phlox was giving classes to all crewmembers on first aid and triage. T’Pol was evaluating every star system they encountered for planets with breathable air, fuel resources and usable food supplies, for places with conditions where the ship could lie in wait, places it could position itself for defense, or places to hide…

It was his duty, of course, to know and understand the status of each department, to be ready with the right questions at this morning’s 0100 scheduled briefing. To ask about readiness or vulnerability and to hear the late-night concerns under the quick snatches of daytime conversation. He accepted it, as he’d once accepted his role as a joyous explorer, leading the crew of Earth’s first warp five vessel into the wonders of the stars.

It was amazing now, looking back at who he was the day when Earth first disappeared from Enterprise’s aft viewers on its way to QonoS. God, had he really been that young? That idealistic? Probably they all had, except T’Pol maybe, and even her sense of cynical Vulcan certainty had been shaken countless times since then.

Of course, he’d seen many long dreamed-of wonders, some of them amazing far beyond his imagining: up-close comets, stellar nurseries, dark matter nebulae, rogue planets… And when the taste of his own weary cynicism grew too bitter in his mouth, he reminded himself there were more of them out there, waiting to be discovered, along with new friendships and alliances. 

That was what the new Coalition of Planets was all about: friendships, alliances…

It was only weeks ago he stood before representatives of Vulcan, Tellar, Andoria and several other worlds, speaking of what they could accomplish together. His words had been met by rousing applause that brought a proud, aching lump to his throat, especially as he looked across the room to where his shipmates stood at parade rest.

His senior officers. His friends.

But even the closeness they’d shared these last years didn’t always ease the loneliness that came with command. 

Mostly he could relegate the subtle sense of isolation to the background. But sometimes, especially in the early mornings, when he woke to another in an on-going series of days spent watching… wondering… waiting… as he had done for all those months in the Expanse last year, he was all too conscious of the solitary weight of responsibility resting squarely on his shoulders.

He accepted that too, and usually, even within the silence of his own mind, without complaint. But sometimes, like this morning, he wished there was a way to shrug the responsibility… not off precisely but… into some different position, one that eased tired mental muscles and allowed him to rediscover where his strengths and resiliency lay. 

Closing out the latest report from his Armory Officer, he reached for the pot of coffee at the side of the desk in his ready room. Unfastening the cover, he poured the hot, dark liquid into his mug, savoring the aroma of the rising steam and allowing its warmth to caress his face before re-sealing the pot. 

He picked up the mug, pausing to study the cartoon on its side before taking his first sip. Two slump-shouldered, droop-winged eagles wearing snow-shoes stood on top of a mountain, staring blearily at each other. The dialogue balloon above one of their heads held the words “Whoever said getting there is half the fun?”. It had been a present from Erika Hernandez last year when they’d gone climbing together during his shore leave after the Xindi mission.

If anyone understood first-hand the burdens and blessings of deep space command, it was Erika, who, for the past several months had captained Earth’s second Warp 5 vessel, NX02, Columbia.

And not only did Erika understand command, she understood… him!

She always had.

 

With her, there was no need to display unwavering confidence when uncertainties nagged at him. He could talk to her about serious concerns and know that the one thing she wouldn’t let him take too seriously was himself. There was no need to search out words to fill in the silences between them, they both trusted that what needed saying would find language in its own time. 

Their easiness together had been the hardest thing to give up when duty to Starfleet ended their deepening romance before Enterprise launched back in 51. He was glad beyond words they’d rediscovered each other after the Xindi mission, and though they’d made no commitments, that she had a part in his life again. 

He took another swallow of coffee, studied the exhausted eagles a moment longer and tried to think of reasons not to follow an urge to contact her. 

It wasn’t like he had news. If there was any, with all the strong possibility that the com channels had been compromised by Romulan operatives, he wouldn’t be able to report it anyway! 

So why did he want-? Need-? to get in touch with Captain Hernandez?

Okay, so it wasn’t exactly Captain Hernandez that he wanted to talk to this morning. 

Or… only partly Captain Hernandez.

Mostly, it was simply Erika. 

Someone who understood his duties, desires, disillusions and most of all, his dreams so very well.

Of course there were others who’d shared them over the years: his dad, A. G. Robinson, Maxwell Forrest and Trip Tucker.

His dad was dead. So were Robinson and Forrest. Trip was hale and healthy and either grabbing a quick breakfast in the Mess or already tinkering away down there in engineering. Jonathan could probably arrange for the two of them to get together for a water polo vid and a couple of beers after A Shift was over. It’d been a while since the two old friends had made time to talk about anything beyond the borders of duty. Or to just munch pop corn and pretzels and shout, cheer or groan as the match unfolded. It’d be a good time, a time to relax… 

Or would it?

Things had been kind of odd between him and Trip the last few days. Ever since they got back from Al Avaron Six.

But no… Trip had been… what? Well, the best word he could come up with was constrained, even before that. Jonathan would once have said “distant”, though that wasn’t quite right. It implied a coldness that wasn’t part of Trip’s what?… Distraction, maybe? He wasn’t sure that fit either. He’d have put the change down to grief over the death of Trip’s baby girl in January, but, looking back, something about him had been different since they’d been rescued from the Algieba mines early last fall. 

At first, Jonathan had dismissed it as a temporary after-effect of the concussion Trip sustained there, along with a resultant memory loss. He couldn’t have said there was any actual problem though, until after the run-in with the Romulans in November, when Trip came to him, asking for a transfer and refusing to give any reason for wanting it. 

When he returned to Enterprise a few weeks later, the comradeship between them had seemed a little awkward, the years of trust, somewhat strained. But then came the incident with Terra Prime, and the rhythm of their minds, working together in tandem, had started clicking away again, as steady and instinctive as ever. Afterward, Trip’s bereavement leave for Elizabeth’s memorial, followed by their insane schedules of Starfleet briefings and engine upgrades and refits at Jupiter Station had kept them from exchanging more than a handful of words for days at a time until Enterprise left Spacedock last month. 

Since then, they hadn’t spent as much off-duty time playing one-on-one hoops in the gym, or watching sports vids in his quarters as they once had. But there hadn’t been as much off duty time to spend doing anything at all! And Jonathan would have sworn that their working relationship had returned to normal.

Until Al Averon. 

That was when he at last found words for Trip’s behavior. Reticent, even guarded. Though he hated to admit it, this new constraint between him and his oldest friend was one more factor adding to this wearying isolation.

Which brought him…

Where else?

Back to Erika!  
When, in December, Trip returned to Enterprise, after overseeing Columbia’s launch, Erika said she knew exactly what was going on with the engineer. 

“I’m surprised you haven’t guessed,” she’d told him. Her face on the personal com link in his quarters had, at first-glance appeared serious, though he knew her well enough to recognize there was a hint of suppressed laughter coming into her vivid dark eyes.

He’d frowned. Speculated. “I know Phlox said Trip was very concerned about a miscalculation he made while setting up a piece of equipment in Sickbay, one that turned out to be inconsequential, but I really can’t imagine that was enough of a reason to make him want to leave…”

She was already shaking her head, still not so much as cracking a smile, though by then he could tell that holding back was costing her some degree of effort. “I could have told you what was going on the first night he arrived here. Jon, it was a woman.”

He couldn’t have heard that right! Trip? Mister Southern Charm himself, whose standard line: “I was a perfect gentleman” had been something of a running joke on the bridge back before the Xindi mission? Leaving? Because of a woman? Without giving his best friend so much as a hint?

Jonathan had stared at her and pulled his incredulous jaw shut. “Trip told you that?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Then, Erika, how do you know?”

“I’m a woman.” 

“I know that, but…” 

“Good. I’m glad to hear it.” 

By then she’d been enjoying herself entirely too much.

“I don’t know what that has to do with anything!” He’d protested.

“You would…” she’d paused, her expression dead-pan for a long second or two. “If you were a woman!”

With that, the merriment in her eyes spilled over into bubbling laughter. It had warmed him that day far more than this cup of coffee was doing now.

Oh, all right then, that was it. 

He reached for the com link. “Hoshi, I want to get in contact with Columbia.” 

He picked up, then looked for where he’d left off reviewing Malcolm’s report on the latest security upgrades and, before he was more than three paragraphs into an updated analysis of phase cannon realignment sequences, her voice came over the link. “Sir, I have Columbia. Are you ready for me to patch it through?”

“Go ahead, Ensign. On scramble.” He topped off his coffee, picked up the steaming mug and settled back in his chair. An instant later, the Starfleet logo filled the screen, only to be replaced by the sight of Erika seated in the Captain’s Mess over on Columbia.

“Captain Hernandez,” he acknowledge, giving her time to push aside what had to be a plate stacked with pancakes and to set down a glass of orange juice. “I hope that you’re enjoying your breakfast!” 

“Jonathan!” her face on the monitor beamed with momentary delight even as her shoulders braced with apprehension. Gone were the days when purely casual contacts could be assumed.

“At ease!” He saluted her with his coffee mug and watched her shoulders relax.

Smiling, she reached for her own mug and saluted him with it in return. He couldn’t make out all the details of its colorful art, but well remembered the little cartoon man sprawled out over a mountain peak covering the upper curve of the handle. Eyes crossed, arms and legs dangling, his panting pink tongue lolled in a way that reminded Jonathan more than a little of Porthos. A series of letters zigzagged downward through the representation of clouds. “I… climbed… Mount McKinley…” He’d given it to her almost five years ago now, after another climbing trip, this one to Denali. 

He turned his mug until he was certain she recognized the eagles on the side of it, then continued to hold it where she could see the design as well as his eyes, smiling as they met hers above the rim. So much to say without the need for, or the risk of, words. 

Remember that night on the mountainside after the Xindi mission? How all those years apart seemed to melt away within the warmth of embracing arms? Hear the music two heartbeats made together? The old familiar tenderness? The trust?

Jonathan raised the mug higher, until it touched the screen. She did the same, until their reaching hands shaped the suggestion of a peak and sealed the secrets of that night, witnessed only by the crystal edged wilderness stars overhead. 

Remember the climbers’ code? Whatever happens on the mountain, stays on the mountain. 

It was amazing to him, even after so much time in deep space, how well emotions could travel, not only through vacuum, but through both kilometers and com links. Their gazes held for several silent seconds before, as if on signal, they lowered their mugs.

Erika, Jonathan realized, was studying him, reading deep and finding something that had her brow furrowing. “Everything all right over there, Jon?”

He shrugged. “Right as can be expected.”

Setting aside her coffee, she returned the gesture with the lift of one shoulder. It spoke a thousand more unnecessary words. Reconnaissance, readiness, Romulans. “It’s about the same here.” 

“It seems,” Jonathan quirked the merest trace of a grin. “That these days, the best news is no news.” 

A frown touched the corners of her mouth, there and gone in a heartbeat before she banished it with a determined lift of her chin. In that gesture, Jonathan saw first a brief reflection of his own weariness and then the tenacious streak that marked both of them as explorers, one that demanded he search beyond the fatigue for something to appreciate, even to savor- just as he was savoring this spur-of-the-moment conversation. 

It was strange. A year ago, he’d resented the determined idealism of the untried captain. He’d told her that he’d lost something out among the stars. Somehow, she’d helped him find it again, to recognized that hope was an ingrained part of the nature they shared. But the touch of fatigue around her eyes, that first moment of apprehension in the set of her shoulders told him it wouldn’t have been surprising to think she might just as easily have been the one initiating this same type of contact this morning. 

But only after she’d finished that stack of pancakes! Unless he missed his guess, they were her long-time favorite, banana.

At recognition of that memory, he found the first real smile of the morning spreading itself across his face. 

“Well, at least…” she said and matched his smile as her eyes began to dance with a teasing light. “Even if there’s nothing else you can tell me about, you can update me on how my Chief Engineer is doing these days.”

No wonder the songwriters said that life was a circle! A little while ago, thoughts of Trip had sent him to Erika, and now she’d just brought him…

Where else?

Back to Trip.

His smile became a laugh. Damn it, that felt good! He hadn’t been doing nearly enough of it lately! Contacting Erika was the best thing he could have done to deliver himself from this morning’s case of the doldrums! “My Chief Engineer is just fine,   
thanks.” Then he forced himself to qualify. “At least I believe he is.”

Erika’s eyebrows lifted. “Better than when he left here?”

“I think so. He’s just seemed somewhat… preoccupied.”

“Enough to affect his performance?” Any hint of amusement was gone. All at once it was Captain Hernandez that was studying him across hundreds of star-systems.

 

And it was Captain Archer who considered the answer. “No, everything’s fine in that regard. Better than fine. Trip sets a higher standard for himself and his crew than anybody I’ve ever worked with.”

At his words, Erika relaxed, then nodded. “I know. He runs a tight department. As far behind our original launch schedule as Columbia was, he still managed to get her up and running on time. But half my engineering staff was threatening to request transfer while he was here.”

Jonathan frowned in some surprise. “Really?” 

Despite his high standards, Trip’s approachable manner and his willingness to work harder and longer than anybody in his command had always inspired loyalty on Enterprise, not disaffection! “You never told me that.”

“Call it intuition,” said Erika. “But I had the idea his impatience and short temper would cool once he got back home again.” 

“There’s no trouble like that since he’s been back. He settled in like he hadn’t been gone at all. In fact, he’s never once mentioned that transfer, or told me what asking for it was all about in the first place. Frankly, I was so pleased to have him back I didn’t ask.”

Picking up her cup, Erika settled back, comfortable in her chair. She smiled as the familiar teasing light crept back into her eyes. “I think we’ve had this particular discussion before.”

“I remember. You said it was because of a woman. Right.”

Her eyes sparkled over the edge of the cup. “I have absolutely no doubt about it. There’s somebody over there he developed feelings for.”

Closing his eyes, Jonathan ran through a list of possible candidates and scenarios. Had there been anybody Trip’s glances had followed a little longer than usual when he and the captain had walked through the corridors together? Anyone whose eyes lingered on Trip for an extended durations? Had there been instances of awkward silences? Quickly suppressed smiles? Stammering speeches? Babbling? Blushes? Blanches? Had he noticed an increased level of friction when he went for a visit or an inspection down in Engineering? 

He checked off a series of unsatisfactory answers. No, there hadn’t been anybody. No, there wasn’t anyone. No, nothing like that, no, no and no. Not that he’d noticed. And one last time, no.

Jonathan opened his eyes. “And, you’re so certain of this because…?” he challenged, as amusement vied with exasperation. “No, don’t tell me. It’s because you’re a woman!”

“I’m glad to know you remember that, too.”

Amusement won. “It’s something I’d be hardly likely to forget,” he began.

But suddenly it was difficult to keep the smile going. The missing of her was far too great, the regret for the lost years of closeness was too deep. 

Neither of them had asked, or wanted, the other to resign their commission for the sake of the relationship back in ’51, when he was awarded command of Enterprise. After all these years, he still didn’t know how they could have handled things differently, when she was as committed to Starfleet as he was. “Married” to it, she had said once, months ago, her tone not quite as light or casual as her words. But when he remembered the warmth of her in his arms on that mountain-side, the question came back to him. Why had they stopped seeing each other? 

Regulations, of course. Old, old regulations, going back for centuries, pre-dating Starfleet. Regulations that disregarded all depth and degree of feelings as something to be dismissed by a simple act of will. Regulations barring what had gone drily down in the books as “fraternization”. 

Not taking his eyes off Erika, Jonathan groped for his coffee-mug, then took a large swallow to banish the tightening dryness in his throat. Why had neither of them even thought to question their decision to break things off? 

They could have put the romance part of their relationship on hold after his promotion. Her advancements had been swift and steady. It wouldn’t have been all that long until her rank was equal to his own. They could at least worked to keep the friendship intact instead of walking away without a backward glance. Could have remained confidants, offered a support system for each other. It would sure have beat deciding the regulations were right and everything between them could suddenly and simplistically be minimized to fit inside the single word “inappropriate”. 

Hell, what had they been thinking? 

He’d been heading out here into space aboard Enterprise, while she’d accepted an officer’s commission on Republic! Whatever kind of romance could they even have conducted from hundreds of light-years apart? 

That breakup of theirs wouldn’t have been due to anything so simple as ambition. Probably it had a lot to do with their mutual love for the wonder-filled, unexplored space that, after years of study and work had at last seemed close enough for them to hear it all but calling both their names. Or maybe the idea that any emotional ties trailing behind them needed to be cut, since there was a chance they might compromise their diligent attention to duty. 

Crazy, earnest, idealistic notion. 

They really had been young then, hadn’t they?

That first night, back on Earth, when she’d come up from behind, tapped him on the shoulder and said the bar was for regular customers, not for heroes, he’d realized that emotional ties were never really cut. 

Or his heart wouldn’t have all but danced in his chest when he turned to see her standing there.

Maybe their parting had held an element of naïve certainty that once they’d satisfied the need to touch the unknown, time would bring them back together for another chance to reconnect later. 

Well, that had been before Xindi.

Before Klingons.

And before Romulans.

Now, despite his belief in the importance of Starfleet’s mission, he couldn’t help but wonder if, because of that decision, far too much that was precious had somehow been sacrificed. 

It was a painful question. Especially in the current situation, when the knowledge that with the Romulan threat growing every day, any conversation they had could be the last. 

At least he knew that, right now, in this instant, there was nothing more important for him to do than gaze at her intelligent, animated features, her lively dark eyes and that sleek pony-tail of hers which could look so practical and professional and yet, at the same time, so joyous and jaunty, and acknowledge to himself how infinitely precious the sight of all of them was to him. 

How precious Erika Hernandez was.

At last he found a trace of the smile that he’d wanted to accompany his words.

But she’d caught the hesitation. He saw her brows lift in quick inquiry. “Jon…?” she began, then paused. 

He’d seen that questioning look before. Halfway up that mountain after the Xindi mission. But she wasn’t going to pry. She’d let him choose whether to release his early-morning demons with words, or to rediscover his own strength in silence, all the while letting him know she was behind him whichever path he picked.

“I have a bet to make with you,” she said, after several silent, attentive seconds. Something of the bantering tone had come back into her voice. He could grab onto that and run with it if he wished and disregard the gentleness in the way she’d spoken his name. Or he could go back to the soft note of inquiry there and take the opening she’d provided to elaborate on just what had prompted him to make this early-morning contact.

Right now, he wasn’t sure anything needed to be said. Just looking at her, knowing she was there for him in the same way he was for her and that they shouldered similar burdens had eased much of the sense of isolation.

“Okay,” he said, surprised to discover a more spontaneous grin spreading across his face and that he’d leaned forward in his chair, brows raising in curiosity. “I’m listening.”

Had there been a hint of challenge beneath her bantering tone a moment ago? Yes, he was almost certain of it. Something beyond the hint of mischief brightening her eyes again as she too leaned forward?

“Since you’ve been wondering about it anyway,” she said, drawing out the words with considered slowness, as if she found each one of them almost as delicious as her pancakes. “You are going to discover for yourself what’s preoccupied Commander Tucker these last months. And then, on the small, very small, almost infinitesimal chance that I’m wrong and the Commander is not suffering the effects of some unrequited love, the next time we’re in San Francisco, I’m taking you out to dinner. You get to choose the place, the drinks, the appetizers as well as the entre…”

“And the dessert?” he teased.

“And the dessert,” she confirmed.

She must really have the courage of her convictions about this if she was going to let him make that decision for her! Erika had always been very particular when it came to choosing her desserts!

Then her earlier words hit him. 

She couldn’t be serious! Talk? To Trip? About, what, his love life? 

God, no!

Jonathan didn’t know whether to laugh or groan. Not that there was a choice. Amazed laughter was already rippling its way up his throat. 

But after a moment, his laughter gave way to the threatened groan, even though that incredulous grin still seemed plastered across his face. Did she know what she was asking? He was supposed to discuss Trip’s love life with him? On purpose? Didn’t she realize that wasn’t a planned kind of conversation? Of course she would…

If she was a guy.

Then she’d know that sort of thing was fallen into more or less by chance! In the course of watching a sports-vid, maybe, if the action slowed. Along with a workout in the gym perhaps, or over a couple of shore-leave beverages. Or even during a long, slow shuttle-pod journey, once the course was set, the scans made and there was nothing left to do but watch for a sight of home in the long-range sensors… 

The whole horrible idea wasn’t made any more comfortable by knowing he and Trip were old, old friends, who’d always been able to talk about virtually anything! 

Or at least they had been… 

Until lately.

The groan trailed away into a long, drawn out sigh and the grin faded as Jonathan sank back in his chair. 

Setting all bets and banter aside, Erika had a point. Something sure as hell had been going on in the chief engineer’s head. And there was no sense putting it off. It was time to get to the bottom of it. He’d have to talk to Trip. At least about Al Averon. 

People had a right to their privacy, yes, but not where the ship’s safety was concerned. Trip’s reluctance to discuss anything to do with that away mission, on top of his odd reticence these last months, would compromise the open communication he and Jonathan had shared since their days working together on the Warp 5 Project. 

As a long-time friend, Jonathan could maybe ignore the sting of Trip’s unwillingness to confide something that was obviously troubling him and allow him to work through whatever it was in his own way. But as his captain, that time was a luxury he could no longer afford to give. With the threat of Romulan attack stretching like a dark, obscuring cloud across the stars, anything that undermined a sense of trust could mushroom in a dozen unpredictable ways during moments of pressure. 

He’d known Trip so long and, he’d always thought, so well, that trust had become almost an ingrained habit. But the truth was, that trust had already been undermined, more than he’d allowed himself to acknowledge until now. Probably had been almost from the moment Trip had walked out of this same room after saying the last thing Jonathan had expected to hear from him- 

“Captain, I want a transfer.” 

–before flat-out refusing to give any sort of explanation.

What Jonathan hadn’t recognized was that half of the problem was coming from his own sense of having been betrayed. Not by his fellow officer, but by his friend. 

“I’ll talk to him,” he said, both humor and resignation giving way to determination.

Erika was nodding. Of course, she’d known he’d say that. Because she knew him. Somehow that helped. 

For that matter, so did that crazy bet of hers. He could deal with the seriousness of the situation and not get so weighed down by whatever lay behind it, while the vision of her bright, understanding eyes sparkled encouragement from the back of his mind. Hadn’t he told himself only a little while ago that he could speak to her of serious concerns and know that the one thing she wouldn’t let him do was to take himself too seriously? 

“All right,” he said. “And if, after I talk with him, it turns out you’re right and Trip’s gotten himself tangled up in an unrequited love for some member of the crew over here, then how do I counter your ante?”

That question was a lot easier and a hell of a lot less complicated than that of how he’d deal with Trip and the possibility that they were looking at the whole ugly “fraternization” issue. 

Great! The man was his oldest friend! Now he and Erika were sitting here talking about an area of Trip’s life that Jonathan had no desire at all to go prying into without being invited, but Trip was also a member of Starfleet with years of service. A department head who knew the rules and regulations as well as anyone. A senior officer in Jonathan’s own chain of command, one of whose duties was to lead by example. Someone who, if Erika was right, should have dammed well known better than to get himself into such a predicament!

Whether she was right or not, the situation would have to be confronted.

For the sake of Enterprise.

For the sake of his oldest friendship. 

Even for the sake of that silly wager that had to be settled as well as for these last few moments of precious, early morning conversation with Erika before he got back to the business of running the ship.

Erika, he realized, was still speculating on his part of the bet. Cupping her chin in one hand, she drummed her fingers against one cheek and considered. “Well, you could be the one to buy dinner? Hmm, no… Something more original than that, since I only thought up that idea on a moment’s notice. In the event you stand to lose the bet, I think you should be the one to decide your own ante.” 

Jonathan’s gaze traveled upward from her face, past the top of the monitor, as if all good responses were written, clear and bold, on the bulkhead’s smooth surface. There were none. He looked back at Erika, the bantering tone of his voice only a little forced. “How long do I get to think about it?”

“Trip’s talk or your part of the wager?”

“Both.”

“The talk? You’ll want to get that taken care of A S A P, and not just for the sake of settling the bet. Deciding on the ante, let’s say …” She shrugged, her eyes still bright. “Hmm. Twenty four hours? As for what it is, you’ll make it good. I trust you.”

Jonathan found the grin was beginning to tug at the corners of his mouth again. 

Amazing what a good idea talking to her this morning had been! 

When he needed a little break from phase cannon alignment, or from Hoshi’s detailed breakdown of at least eight conjugative forms of Romulan verbs, he could pause to come up with a lot of interesting options for collecting on that bet! 

“Under these circumstances,” he teased. “That could prove dangerous!”

“I’ll chance it,” said Erika. “If we couldn’t face a little risk, we wouldn’t be out here, would we?”

He loved the way she had of putting things in perspective. How she reminded him of who he was, what had brought both of them out into the stars in the first place. 

His grin widened. 

Rogue planets, comets, supernovas. They were the wondrous returns for the risks, reconnaissance, Romulans and, ultimately all part of a day in the life he’d chosen. “Let’s put it this way,” he said. “I wouldn’t trade this for Admiral Gardner’s desk.”

He could still hear her laugh, see her emphatic nod of agreement as he signed off. He finished his mug of coffee, considered a refill then decided it could wait. He picked up Malcolm’s data PADD, located the spot where he’d left off on the latest adjustment to phase cannon alignment sequences, then, before preparing to immerse himself in it, he reactivated his com.

“Hoshi,” he said. “Put me through to Engineering. I need to have a word with Commander Tucker.”


	2. Chapter Two

Chapter Two

28 March, 2155  
Enterprise NX02  
Zero eight hundred hours, fifteen minutes

 

“I think there are a few things we should talk about.” 

The captain’s gaze lifted over the top of a PADD almost before the door finished sliding shut behind him. 

“Yes, Sir?” Trip Tucker paused in front of the desk.

Well, this was it, then. The inevitable moment. 

Trip had known Jonathan Archer a long, long time. He’d called him his friend since the days they’d worked at the Warp Five Complex. These last years, serving together aboard Enterprise NX-01, he’d also called him “Captain”. He’d liked and respected him in each capacity. 

This morning, he wondered which one of them he was facing.

Either way, he wasn’t looking forward to this meeting.

“About Al Avaron Six, Trip?” 

The two, three four quick commands tapped into the device were loud in the silence. Trip stepped toward the chair on his side of the desk and paused, watching the lighted screen go dark within the curve of the captain’s fingers.

Archer hadn’t asked the question yet. Not exactly. But the stillness crowding the room almost shouted that the difference was only one of words, not of substance. 

When in the hell are you going to tell me how we got off that planet? 

He’d known since they got back it wasn’t an issue of whether the question would be asked, but when. And that when was now.

The waiting stillness in here was so thick Trip wasn’t sure a phase cutter could penetrated it. And there had been no offer of morning coffee, even though a pot of it sat right there, all but beckoning to him from near the captain’s elbow. 

That omission could say a lot. 

This is a formal meeting with Captain Archer, who will sit back and relax with a cup of his own once he’s done with you and you’re on the way back down to Engineering where, if you still want it, you can get a cup of your own. 

Or there might be no significance to it at all. 

His own mug is sitting there, right beyond his elbow. There’s no steam coming out of it, so its either empty or he’s been so busy studying the morning reports he forgot all about it. He’ll rustle up another mug and invite you to share some once that pot recaptures his attention. 

The tone of those prompting words had provided no clue. 

Neither did the fact that he hadn’t been gestured to take a seat.

Trip cleared his throat. Maybe the best thing was to quit trying to read all the possible meanings in the captain’s words, take them at face value and ask: “What do you wanna know about Al Averon?” 

That would buy him a few seconds.

Yeah, as if that’d do him any good! He’d been searching for the last two days for a satisfactory explanation. But what would stalling really accomplish except to knock his own self-respect right out from under him? They’d both know that’s what he was doing.

The captain expected better than that from him. 

The friend deserved more. A hell of a lot more.

It was a long time since he’d considered whether it mattered whether he was talking with his friend or his commanding officer. Usually, the line between the two was all but invisible, defined primarily by their years of trust in each other and their mutual respect for the structure of Starfleet. Right now, he only knew that for one of the few times since he’d met Jonathan Archer, he couldn’t read through the expectancy to get a sense of the man across the desk from him. 

And if the line was too wide to see past, who was responsible for drawing it, anyway?

He was the one walked in here back in November, with the same damn fist clutching his guts and announced he wanted a transfer.

His taut muscles remembered that moment, like it was now, not months ago. He could hear the seconds of silence after his blurted words. See how the captain had risen, as usual his thoughts and actions flowing together. Jonathan had sent him a sidelong glance to see whether Trip was serious or seeking an opening to vent a little steam. 

When it came, his careful question had allowed for the possibility of either… or both. 

“Where?” he asked. 

“Columbia.” Trip had said. “They need experienced people.”

From a few paces away, Jonathan had continued to study him, his gaze more perplexed than anything else, though there was a suggestion of challenge underlying the words. “You’ve turned them down twice before. Why now?” 

“I think I could do some good over there.”

Trip hadn’t wanted to sound so damn defensive, just wanted to cover the strain of making that decision and his doubts about the rightness of it. 

The captain’s quiet response had been jarring. “I need you here, Trip.”

“They need me more.” 

Damn it, he’d had to say something! Say it before the impact of Jonathan’s words sank in and made things harder than they already were. Before they could cause him to change his mind. But did it have to be something so playground childish and stupid? Who did he think he was kidding? 

Obviously not the captain. 

“What’s this really all about?” asked Jonathan.

Trip’s words were clipped, brittle, but at least, he hoped, level. “I told you.”

“I haven’t heard one thing that explains this.” 

There was the beginning of anger in Jonathan’s voice, along with his instinctive knowledge that, after all the years of honesty, Trip was holding out on him.

If only he could’ve come up with another option! 

But it hadn’t only been about him, had it? Not even then.

Okay, it was his problem things had gotten out of control. His one-sided fascination, which meant it was also his responsibility to handle the situation. But he wasn’t the only one his words could impact. Not if he let slip how the whole thing got started, out there in the Expanse. 

Trip managed to meet his old friend’s eyes for a heartbeat and refused to see the disappointment there. “I’ve said everything I want to…”

That much was honest.

“That’s it? I’m supposed to accept it?” 

Trip nodded.

“And if I refuse your transfer?”

There was one brief moment of relief. Truth was, Trip didn’t want to go. Enterprise   
was home. He’d always felt needed here, that he did a good job here… 

At least until… 

Until he couldn’t keep his thoughts focused on his work. 

That relief was an illusion. He couldn’t… mustn’t stay. 

For a moment the disciplined, formal armor cracked. “As a friend, I’m asking you. Let me do this.”

“It’s your career, Trip, but…” His own painful sincerity was echoed in Jonathan’s voice. “As a friend… I’m asking you to stay.”

Didn’t he realize there was nothing Trip wanted more? For the sake of the home this ship had been and the value of the friendship both he and the captain had invoked? 

But he couldn’t. Not with the danger a moment’s distraction could cause. He’d gotten off lucky, missing that ten degree variance in the telepresence emitter. Phlox said it hadn’t caused Jhamel’s seizure. But it had been ten degrees too many! He should’ve caught it! Would have if he’d been concentrating the way the job demanded. 

He’d been riding an internal tide of emotions for weeks, maybe months. His only option was to distance himself from the situation til it inevitably, eventually… subsided, Until then, he couldn’t trust the rebellious thoughts that kept drifting to… to… her. 

Regret had almost choked his words. “I can’t.”

For motionless seconds they stared at each other. When the moment broke, Trip knew something more than gazes had snapped.

“All right.” Jonathan said.

“Thank you-” Trip’s began. 

The captain’s voice took on the brisk formality of command. “Dismissed.”

There was an awful note of finality in that word.

But of course, there had been nothing final about it.

Weeks later, he was back here, conducting an emergency engine shut down and cold restart, then repairing damage caused by a Klingon boarding party. Captains Archer and Hernandez had signed off on his reassignment back to Enterprise and Trip had settled into his old quarters and his old routine, almost like he’d never been gone.

Almost. His time away had helped him discover what lay beneath the odd tug and drift of his thoughts. Since coming home, he’d begun the exploration of what it meant for him. And for her.

For them.

But his abrupt departure had cost him the easy comradeship of his oldest friend. Of all the people in the galaxy he could have trusted, why hadn’t he tried to offer Jon at least some kind of explanation?   
He’d often heard it said time heals all wounds. Things were better between them in recent weeks. They’d shared a little laughter about the exotic green Orient women who’d tried to take over the ship, and a lot of grief over the death of his little Elizabeth… 

Yeah, better…

But the tension in this room right now made him think time had only allowed the hurt to scar over enough to stop bleeding, but not enough to heal clean. 

About Al Averon, Jonathan had said.

Those words seemed to have hung between them for hours.

How could he be both honest and fair to the two most important people in his life?

It wasn’t exactly the issue of privacy that made him hesitate back in November. Or right now for that matter, though it was a huge consideration. He wouldn’t be speaking about only himself, after all. But then, T’Pol did belong to Enterprise’s command   
structure and she would understand the requirements of duty, as well as Trip’s responsibility to the captain. 

At least if… no, when… Trip spoke his piece, she wouldn’t consider it a deliberate violation. But she would be uncomfortable with him spilling his guts about all that had been happening between them the last several months, and how the results of it had become a part of how things played out down there on the planet. 

Not that she’d say so, of course. Vulcans didn’t admit to emotional reactions such as discomfort, but Trip’d know that she was experiencing it.

That was the point.

Every feeling, every concern that T’Pol could mask from almost everybody, almost all the time, Trip would know about. 

He might not pick up all the little subtleties or the cultural context. There was way too much involved in the proud, private business of being Vulcan that he still just didn’t get. But he’d perceive an echo of her reactions, even if she considered them irrelevant and tried to suppress them or screen them from him.

The discomfort he’d deal with. Both hers and his. 

No, that was incorrect. He and T’Pol would deal with it. Together. 

It was finding the precise words, the description of what had happened that was going to give him trouble. Was there any way to explain that wouldn’t put T’Pol’s privacy and possibly her very career in jeopardy because of him? 

Too bad he didn’t have Hoshi’s gift for languages wasn’t it? 

No. No, it wasn’t. That would only lead to looking for subtle ways of skirting a discussion of what he and T’Pol had become to each other. Better to just trust the man across the desk to catch his meaning, even if the language fell short. To read the quality of the stops and silences and know Trip was doing his best to fill in the pieces of the Al Averon puzzle for him. 

They known each other well enough to get through all that, didn’t they? 

Yeah, for sure. At least until recently.

It was strange that the flicker of uncertainty was what strengthened Trip’s resolve. God, aside from whatever came out of this whole Al Averon business, he missed his old friend! Since he was the one who’d wounded their friendship, he damned well better be the one to do what was needed to clean out that wound so real healing could begin. 

His next breath told him the fist beneath his breastbone had relaxed its hold.

Trip looked at the last red traces of wind-burn painting his captain’s cheeks and found the steady, unhurried green gaze of his friend.

“Okay,” he sighed and let his posture follow his intuition, dropping any suggestion of the erect posture that formal ship’s discipline called for, and then let himself drop into the chair. “This might take a while.”

The captain may have asked the question and was going to overhear everything that was said, but it was the friend Trip was going to answer. 

“I think this is going to be an explanation worth waiting for,” said Jonathan.

The captain hadn’t settled back in his own chair. Not quite anyway. So he would definitely be poised and listening as the story unfolded. But his shoulders had relaxed and though only a flicker of a smile touched the corners of his mouth, his green eyes had lit with intrigued curiosity and there had been no stern tone of command in his voice.

Trip returned a ghost of that smile, then gestured toward the coffee pot. “Mind if I help myself to a little of that?”

Jonathan bent forward. There was the small, reverberated sound of smooth metal sliding across smooth metal as a panel opened behind the desk. A moment later, a second mug joined the one already sitting beside the pile of data PADDs. Trip watched as first one, then the other was filled with a stream of steaming brown liquid. 

Without another word, Jonathan set the pot aside, extended a fragrant mug toward him then settled back in his seat. 

Trip took the cup, inhaling the smell of new brewed coffee and cradled the mug between his hands. For several luxurious seconds, he didn’t move, didn’t think, simply savored the sudden welcome warmth.

Warmth. Could there be anything better? The wonderful feel of it sent shivers of pleasure through him. For the first time since coming in here, his smile was full and spontaneous as he looked at his friend across the rim of the mug.

And realized at last that he knew how to begin. “You remember how bad the weather conditions got down there? How cold it got?” Trip asked.

By the brief, convulsive shiver that jittered Jonathan Archer’s fingers on the desk and rippled in quick, hard shudders through his arms and shoulders at mention of that one word “Cold”, it was all too obvious how well the captain remembered.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

24 March, 2155

Enterprise NX02

Ten hundred hours, twenty five minutes

Four days earlier…

 

It hadn’t been all that bad when the shuttle-pod touched down on Al Averon. Cold, yes. Definitely cold. And damp. Bone-biting damp in a way that reminded Jonathan of December mornings in San Francisco. The word that kept coming to him as he scrambled through the opening hatch was “clammy”. 

The sky overhead had been a sharp and glaring silver-white, an uninterrupted cloud bank which also put him in mind of foggy days in the Bay Area. Though the hills stretching steeply away from them in three directions held some of the illusion in place, it broke apart after a second glance around revealed a rugged, scrub covered landscape drawn all in shades of brown and pewter, with scatters of half–melted dirty white snow, overlying even older, greyer patches of rotting ice. 

Maybe not the most welcoming spot, but as a location for a preliminary surface evaluation of the planet, this was ideal. 

The Al Averon star system lay almost midway between what was believed to be the central world of the Romulan Star Empire and the heart of the new Coalition of Planets. Al Averon VI fit most of the parameters that might render it of strategic importance in the looming conflict. Borderline Minshara class, it had breathable air, resources of mineral fuel and usable food supplies, and, at least from that distance, suggested it offered conditions in which the ship could position itself for defense, or, if need be, to hide…

But did the geology of the planet make surface communications, or those with the ship inconsistent? If so, at what range? Did the solar disruptions and ionic activity that long range scans had picked up within the system, change inconsistent to impossible? What navigational difficulties might they present?

The answer, as far as the shuttle-pod’s orbital approach and landing was concerned, had been: none. Despite indications that precipitation was on the way, and the drab and dreary landscape, it had been enough to get the expedition off to an optimistic start. 

There was a sharp crunch of gravel and dried undergrowth as Trip Tucker dropped to the ground beside him. “Long way from Florida,” the engineer said, pulling on a pair of gloves, before he and the captain turned to retrieve packs and containers of equipment as they appeared in the hatchway.

“Add a loch or two,” said Lieutenant Reed, as he passed a bulky backpack to the captain and a mid-size crate to Trip, then clambering out himself and reaching back inside for one of his own. “And it could probably pass for the north of Scotland.”

From within the shuttle-pod, Travis Mayweather’s voice sounded muffled, but   
cheerful. “How many does this make it for you now, Lieutenant?”

“Thirty four,” Malcolm glanced over at Trip. “You?”

“Thirty four what?” Trip set his crate on the ground beneath a wind-gnarled tree at the base of a steeply rising hillside.

“Planets. How many have you walked on?” Travis appeared in the hatchway and set a cargo container on the floor before him. 

“We were comparing notes back on Mars when Paxton and company were holding the array.” Malcolm explained, setting his container beside Trip’s. “That was my thirty second. The doctor said he had something over two hundred.”

Trip whistled long, loud appreciation. “I know I got a ways to go to match that!”

Travis reached back to take one last pack from T’Pol, then grinned at Jonathan. “How about you, Captain?”

“I’m afraid I’ve lost track,” Jonathan answered, slipping the straps of his pack over one shoulder then the other. He took the pack from Travis’s outstretched arms. He started with it toward the tree, then paused to glance back at T’Pol, who stood, scanner in hand, in the doorway behind Travis. He shot her a grin. “But, Commander, I imagine   
you could give the doctor a run for his money.”

“To date,” she said, as she studied something on her scanner. “I have visited only ninety seven planets.” 

“Only ninety seven, huh?” Trip flashed a grin up at T’Pol as he jogged back toward the shuttle.

On a brief laugh, Jonathan set down the equipment pack and raised his collar against the damp. “I don’t think I ever caught your answer, Trip.”

His gaze still resting on T’Pol, Trip shrugged one shoulder. “I haven’t got a clue. But I bet it’s in the records someplace if anybody wants to do the math.”

“Kind of spoils the fun of it though, doesn’t it?” asked Travis of nobody in particular. He didn’t leave the ‘pod, but moved aside to clear a way for T’Pol to climb out. 

“I believe,” she said, turning to Malcolm. “The optimal placement for reception would be immediately to the left of where that tree emerges from the rock-face.”

Trip stood for a moment, watching her follow her scanner’s lead to a spot some fifteen meters up the slope from the scatter of supplies, then he turned to scoop up a backpack similar to the one Jonathan wore. 

Since the death of their baby daughter, Trip had seemed solicitous of the science officer, but, Jonathan was pleased to note as he lifted the last cargo carrier from the hatchway, the engineer had managed to walk the fine line that kept concern from becoming over-protectiveness. 

Malcolm picked up the banter as he sorted through the pile of supplies. “The Commander might not know how many planets he’s been on, but I’ll wager he can tell us precisely how many engines he’s taken apart.”

“Let me think about that a second…” Trip rolled thoughtful eyes toward the grey sky. “I’d say maybe… six hundred twenty four… wait, let’s make that six twenty sev-”

Jonathan grinned at Travis. “He’s pulling your leg.”

Trip shot him an offended glare. “Am not. It’s the… absolute… unvarnished truth!” Though he tried, he couldn’t sustain the look and joined in the laughter. 

Jonathan found himself smiling. It was a good thing, hearing that sound from the engineer after Trip’s quiet grief of the last few weeks.

Swinging a final container from Jonathan’s hands, Malcolm clicked a quick code into a PADD mounted on its surface, then nodded his approval as the latches flipped open. Kneeling on the ground, he continued connecting a series of sensor boards, gages and monitors, pausing only to take a coiled cable from T’Pol as she crouched beside him. Jonathan shifted the pack on his back and again gave a moment’s attention to the landscape. “I think,” he said. “If Trip and I set out now, we can reach that area of highest elevation in somewhere between sixty and ninety minutes or so. We can get the reciprocal scans set up and rendezvous back here by a little after thirteen hundred. We will keep you updated as to our progress.”

“Good, Sir,” Malcolm barely glanced up as he slipped the cable into its port while T’Pol secured its other end. “We should have this one ready for both transmitting and receiving in the next minute or so.” 

“Excellent,” said Jonathan, fastening an equipment belt at his waist, his gloved fingers running an automatic check to be certain his communicator, goggles, scanner and searchlight were within comfortable reach. “Ensign Mayweather, will that give you time to establish a baseline orbital scan before we activate the rest of the sensor array?”

“I’ve got the courses laid in for both latitudinal and longitudinal orbits,” nodded Travis from the hatchway. “Each of them are different enough from the approach we took coming in that, working from these readings, Commander T’Pol and Lieutenant Reed should be able to pick up a wide range of data. I’d estimate we’ll be done with both orbits by the time you and Commander Tucker get the adjunct signal going. We’ll repeat them for a comparative survey while you’re on the way back. We can recollect this equipment while we wait for you to rendezvous with us here.”

Trip was gazing up the hillside, making an obvious study of the landscape. “See that thing that looks kinda like a tall, skinny, forked pine tree?” he asked. “I think if we angle up and around that to the left, we’re gonna have a better access to the rock-face. It looks like we got some good exposed surfaces there, as well as the altitude.” 

Jonathan scrutinized the spot where Trip pointed and nodded. “Make that an hour and a half going up then.”

“We can,” T’Pol rose to her feet and turned to make her way back toward the captain. “Use the extra time to gather additional topographic information, as well as further refining Lieutenant Reed’s security analysis. If I might, Sir, have a word with you?”

“All right, Commander.” Jonathan fell into step beside her as their crunching footsteps carried them across the brown and grey ground to a spot several yards away from the monitoring equipment and the shuttle-pod. “What’s on your mind?”

“Captain,” she said. “I am less than sanguine about you and the Commander, as two of Enterprise’s ranking officers, choosing to make this particular endeavor together. A captain’s first responsibility is to his ship. Relegating assignments is…”

“I understand your concern, Commander,” Jonathan said. “But, as you know, Commander Tucker has a wide knowledge of both gem and ore based fuel sources. The other person most qualified to accompany me will be busy handling the sensor survey.” he glanced over his shoulder toward Travis.

“I am not,” said T’Pol. “Discussing Commander Tucker or Ensign Mayweather, but-”

“I’m quite aware of who you’re discussing, Commander.” Jonathan managed to keep most of the abruptness out of his voice. Though there’d been no opportunity for her to do so earlier, he’d known she’d bring the issue up since he’d announced the make-up of the landing detail. He’d worked with her long enough to recognize a subtle change in her posture, the set of her chin and an unblinking evaluation taking place in her large eyes. 

He sighed and waited for her to go on.

T’Pol was, after all, bringing up a point that had begun making the rounds of serious discussion at Starfleet. One that, in all honesty, he had a hard time disagreeing with, at least on an intellectual level, though it argued painfully with his explorer’s heart. The captain’s place was supposed to be in the center seat on the bridge, not as one more member, not even as the leader, of a routine landing detail. 

Not that he would call this one routine.

Not with the Romulans out there…

Somewhere. Preparing…

Something.

Not with this planet’s strategic location. He wanted… needed… to get a feel for the place, not make what could someday be crucial plans based only on computer generated hypotheses and sensor readouts…! 

But that look she had given him was troubling. He could almost see the series of memories she’d been reviewing. The time he’d come under hostile fire fleeing across the Cygnial desert Expanse with Trip, or how he’d almost gotten hanged as a spy, when Malcolm lost a communicator during a local dispute on a pre-warp planet. Then there was that incident where she found he’d tied himself to a stalagmite on Algeiba so he wouldn’t get washed away in an underground flood. Not to mention…

All right, end list, point made! They’d all begun as routine missions. 

He didn’t like it, but he had to ask himself a few quick, hard questions.

Had he been making excuses to himself? Looking for a way to recapture, even for a couple of brief hours, that old sense of being the explorer who’d set out with this ship and crew back in ’51? Looking out with eager eyes at all the possibilities waiting beyond the skin of his vessel? 

Maybe. Maybe.

And what was so bad about that?

He believed his skills were still sharp. Knew also that, were action… quick decisive action… required of him, he was ready and able to carry it out, to trust his instincts and his responses. But sometimes, these last months, he found himself questioning his own motivations. His need to reach further down within himself to get past the gradual cynicism he’d developed in the course of the Xindi mission. To discover something new and wondrous, where the element of surprise had nothing to do with power, piracy, warfare or weaponry.

Not that there appeared anything particularly wondrous to be found on the surface of this clammy, grey world. But it was not one of the… 

(How many now?)

…planets he’d set foot on before. 

(He really should check on that exact number. He might give T’Pol, if not Phlox, a run for the money!) 

Al Averon VI’s newness was a plus, and since the planet could prove to be an important one and… since the opportunity had presented itself… it really would be completely reasonable to gain a working knowledge of what it might have to offer. And part of that would be getting first hand, on-the-spot reports from Commander Tucker on the planet’s naturally occurring fuels. 

Okay, so he was arguing himself into what he wanted to do anyway. Maybe someday regulations would change, but for now he was going to assume the captain’s prerogative!

T’Pol was still looking at him. 

He gentled his tone. “Your concern is noted, Commander,” he said, reaching up to tighten one shoulder strap of his pack. “And appreciated.”

He could hear her footfalls behind him as he turned and made his way to where Trip had finished strapping on his own equipment belt. “Ready, Commander?” 

“I’m with ya, Cap’n,” said Trip, tugging a dark blue cap down over his ears as he fell into step beside him. He was grinning.

Another good thing, Trip’s old carefree grin. Made even better when he paused just long enough to call over his shoulder to where Travis was giving Malcolm room to scramble back into the shuttle-pod. “By the way, Travis… I figured it out! This planet makes number forty three!”

It was a welcome thing, seeing his old friend’s emergence from the darkest of his sorrows. That and the promise of what this planet might be able to provide during the coming conflict had a warming glow of optimism spreading through Jonathan’s chest despite the glowering grey skies and the late-morning damp. 

Tugging his own dark blue watch-cap down over his ears, he made one more adjustment to his collar, then turned to T’Pol. “We’ll report in at regular intervals. More often if anything seems irregular.”

She nodded, then scrambled into the shuttle-pod behind Malcolm. Jonathan heard its door sliding shut as he started up the slope with Trip. 

It might be a long way from warm, sunny Florida, but the cold here really wasn’t all that bad, even considering that hint of clammy bone-bite to it that reminded him so much of San Francisco. 

A nostalgic grin touched the corners of his mouth as he looked up into the silver sky.

No, not bad at all. In fact, the brisk, bracing air felt almost wonderful against the growing warmth of their uphill exertions.

At least, until the weather changed. 

 

 

 

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Al Averon VI  
Twelve hundred thirty hours

He was definitely going to sleep well tonight. Every satisfied muscle told him so.

Jonathan stowed the last loops of extra cable in the main compartment of his pack, then reached for the soup thermos waiting in a large side pocket. Getting to his feet, he brushed damp leaves from his knees, gave his back a delicious stretch and enjoyed a long, nourishing drink of warm chicken broth, rich with sage and thyme. 

It was a rare and precious moment, one combining duty with pure and simple pleasure. Standing on a narrow plateau only a few feet from the summit, he took a long appraising look, half appreciation, half speculation, down the hillside at the ground he and Trip had covered.

It was a satisfying view, especially since the climb had taken longer, been steeper, than the original estimate. 

Their landing spot was out of sight beyond a wind-gnarled cluster of what he could   
only think of as “scrub-brush pine”: something very much like firs, kind of scraggy, more than a bush, less than a tree. But the landmarks along the trail they’d made were easy to recognize. Two large rock-face surfaces shone vivid sienna against the dull tan, cream and pewter shades. A couple of lower plateaus were divided by a relatively steep stretch of hillside, and there was a broad, open expanse Jonathan thought he would have called a meadow if it had been grassy green and full of wildflowers.

The only disquieting thing was the deepening grey smudging the silver brightness of the western horizon. Precipitation on the way. It had been announced by the sensors during the shuttle-pod’s descent from Enterprise. Moving in at slow speed from the west. But it seemed there had been no visible trace of it only minutes ago when-

“Cap’n?” Scanner in hand, Trip looked up from where he knelt between the completed monitoring set-up and his pack. Still tapping in what could either be questions or commands, he jerked his chin toward the gathering grey and echoed Jonathan’s thoughts. “Looks like that’s comin’ in awfully fast.” 

“I’ll get an updated ETA on when we can make the rendezvous with Ensign Mayweather. How long before you’re done there?”

Trip deactivated his scanner, clipped it to his belt and rose, running a quick visual to see if he had all his equipment. Everything was packed except for a digital spanner and Trip’s own thermos. “All done. I’ll be ready as soon as I can stash the last of my gear.”

“Good.” As Jonathan reached for his comm., a light gust of wind made a playful grab at his cap. “Archer to Shuttle-pod Two,” he said as he tugged it back down over his ears.

“Reed here.” Faint static fizzled across the words.

“Malcolm… What’s the expected time until you touch down again?”

He could hear clipped conversation in the background, interwoven with snaps and crackles. T’Pol’s voice, Travis’s. T’Pol’s again. 

It was close to fifteen seconds before he caught Malcolm’s response. “Ensign Mayweather reports we need to make at least one more orbit before we can consider a safe landing, Sir. The ionic activity we were concerned about is escalating rapidly. A broad band is passing over your area of the planet at this time There’s no way of getting a clear fix on our last coordinates or your precise position relative to it until it passes.”

Jonathan glanced toward the smudged western sky. Was the darkening area larger? Broader? Already? He frowned. “We’ve got a weather front building here as well. Can you get us any high altitude estimates on its severity or duration? Might also be a good idea if we know when we can expect it to arrive.”

T’Pol’s voice replaced Reed’s over the comm. “We had your weather system on scans since the original descent from Enterprise, but a shift in barometric pressure has caused a slight change of direction only within the past half hour. The convergence with another, smaller system has resulted in a sharp increase in intensity. We are charting it now. I don’t…”

Her words were almost lost amid a firecracker series of static bursts. Closing his eyes, Jonathan concentrated as she continued. “… have sufficient… extrapolate from yet… Should have… for you shortly. I would advise concluding… set-up… quickly as… and making… way… sheltered area.”

“We’re on our way. Keep us posted.” Jonathan signed off as Trip shrugged into his pack, adjusted his cap lower on his forehead. 

“Seem to you like the temperature’s droppin’?” Trip asked.

“Now that you mention it, I think you’re right.” Jonathan realized he’d been tugging at his collar. “Until a minute ago, I thought it was only the metabolic burn from our climb wearing off.” 

Trip grinned, though it didn’t mask the concern growing in his blue eyes as they flicked westward. “Well, let’s get things heated up again. I’m ready.” 

Turning, he started across the plateau, his quick footfalls raising the rather pleasant, sweetish smell of disintegrating undergrowth.

Nodding, Jonathan set off, a little behind him after a moment spent retracing the view of their path and running an ETA for the shuttle rendezvous. Their climb had taken somewhat more time than the original approximation, owing to the occasional roundabouts they’d had to make to clear clusters of half-grown scrub pines. Descent would be faster, though he guessed it would also take a bit longer, at least an hour and a quarter, maybe even an hour and a half before they made it back. He checked his chronometer. Twelve hundred forty. They were going to miss their projected window, but not by all that much, if they factored in that extra orbit. He or Trip would keep the shuttle crew informed of their progress. Except…

His brow furrowed.

That crackling static was a concern. How large a one he couldn’t know. Best to just keep making tracks down the hill. 

Twelve fifty.

When the rain began, it only added an extra incentive to pick up the pace.

Not that it was a hard rain. More of a heavy mist, an increased clamminess to the air, that again brought back thoughts of San Francisco. Even when the playful wind’s mood turned waspish and began delivering gusty, smarting slaps to the side of his face, it only supplied a few additional memories of particularly annoying Bay Area days. 

Thirteen hundred hours.

He only realized it had become sleet when those misty slaps began to be peppered with small, hard-edged granules. 

Nodding to each other in wordless agreement, they speeded up making tracks.

It was only an expression when the phrase first crossed his mind. Only another way of saying they’d better get a move on, hustle, bust their butts, hurry. But as he stepped into the open space that reminded him of a dazed, mid-winter meadow, he thought…

No, more than thought…

He saw vague, white, sprinkle-edged tracings of Trip’s footsteps in the wilted tan undergrowth and fallen leaves.

Thirteen hundred hours, five minutes.

“Archer to Shuttle-Pod Two.”

“Shah…paw… ooh… ‘all.” A certain vague tonality to the buzzing suggested he might be speaking with T’Pol, though for the most part what came out of his comm. sounded like pancakes frying on a hot griddle.

“T’Pol, report!” He willed her to understand him better than he had understood her. Even more that he could make reasonable sense out of whatever her response might be.

Static and feedback shrieked through the handheld device and he guessed she was attempting to transmit over a varying range of bandwidths.

“…you… understand… me?”

It was distant, but with focused attention he could make her out. “Yes, T’Pol. I copy.  
What can you tell me?”

Over the griddle sounds, her words came, spoken slow in order to circumvent the chops and fizzes of interference. “…ionization making… impossible… this low an orbit. Returning… Enterprise. Can… ‘tinue… monitoring you through… ‘nicator signals for transport as…possible … you copy?” 

“We copy,” said Jonathan, as Trip glanced over his shoulder at him. “Let’s keep initiating contact on each end at quarter hour intervals. Copy?”

“Un… stood.” Her voice was fading behind the static again, then vanishing into silence. He could only hope she had, indeed, understood.

He checked his chronometer. Thirteen hundred ten.

Trip was looking at him with raised eyebrows.

“For now we’re on our own. Kind of takes you back to those days of survival training, doesn’t it?” Already, those tracks that had been little more than pale, lacey impressions on the ground’s bland coloring, had become clear, dark prints on a bed of powder white. Remembering Trip’s earlier comment about their surroundings, he improvised on it, his grin only a little forced. “But it’s a long way from Australia.”

Trip returned the grin, his good natured gripe managing to sound almost casual. “Well, at least it’s not a desert!”


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Al Averon VI  
Fourteen hundred… Something

Jonathan didn’t bother to check his chronometer. It had become fourteen hundred hours a couple of hundred yards above their present position. They were going to be far, far outside their window for the originally planned rendezvous.

There had been two more exchanges of status reports with the shuttle-pod, each little more than static-tangled strings of words, just managing to convey that the craft was still orbiting the planet, heading for a docking with Enterprise somewhere high above the snowstorm, while he and Trip continued to make their careful, step by step way down a slope that was being buried beneath it.

This place was definitely no desert! 

It hadn’t taken Jonathan more than a few minutes of pressing into the cold, bitter slap of wind-driven snow, and wiping the latest splatter off his goggles, to decide that the time spent on Zobral’s planet early in their mission really hadn’t been so bad after all.

Beside him, Trip’s tracks were no longer dark blotches on a dusting of white. They were uneven, herring-bone depressions amid wind-rumpled blankets of snow. It was already well up over their boot-tops and so far showed no signs at all of slowing.

Jonathan had seen his fair share of winter storms while spending time at the Warp Five Complex outside of Bozeman, Montana. More than a few of them were white-out blizzards, with winds that not only howled, but screamed beyond the windows, and snow that came down several inches an hour. They had seemed like wild fierce, almost living things, especially to his eight-year-old self when his Dad took him there for the first time. Even as an adult, they could be unnervingly fierce to someone who spent the bulk of his on-Earth time in California. 

This one might not be as cold as those storms he remembered, but he was realist enough to know things were going to head in that direction. Already, the early slush had frozen to ice beneath their feet, making the going slow and treacherous. However, in the past quarter hour or so, as the temperature dropped, the heavy, wet snow had begun to give way to drier, lighter powder that provided at least a little much-welcomed, though not to be fully trusted, traction. 

Some precipitation on the way! 

Was that really all the sensors on the shuttle-pod had indicated… some? 

What kind of a report had that been, anyway? 

T’Pol would probably say that some of the shifts in the weather pattern had been masked by intense ionization. Those readings were going to be gone over in minute, painstaking detail once he and Trip got back to the ship. Hard to say when that was going to be.

Harder to say now exactly where they were.

Visibility was measurable to a distance of…

Of-? The shadow-banishing grey of the sky and the constant flying swirl of flakes obliterated any reliable clues for determining depths or distances. Trip’s figure beside him had become a ghostly blur through his snow smeared goggles. He swiped at them again. For a few moments, that made things better. A little anyway. The scrub pine ahead and below them had become uneven clumps of white with brownish grey branches poking through here and there and the route they’d taken now showed as an uneven depression winding its way back and forth down the hillside. If they could get to a lower altitude, the larger trees would provide more of a windbreak, making the going much easier as it left more landmarks exposed, with shallower drifts to wade through.

Still, he had to admit, the cold air was fresh and clean, the exertions of motion were keeping him warm and it was refreshing to deal with the honesty of natural elements instead of the half-veiled nuances of diplomacy. 

That didn’t mean he wanted to continue doing this for an extended period of time. 

He wrestled his comm off his belt. “Archer to Shuttle-pod Two.”

Static. Five seconds of it. Ten. “Archer to Shuttle-pod Two, do you copy?”

Nothing.

“Archer to Enterprise.” 

“Enterprise, Ensign Sato.” She was there, but it was hard to hear Hoshi, too. Her words sounded small, tinny and very welcome through the whine and moan of the wind. “We’re having a hard time reading you, Sir.”

Jonathan wondered if it was the loudness of the gusts or the ionic interference that was giving her trouble and if raising his voice would help. “Has Shuttle-pod Two reported in yet? We haven’t been able to reach them from here.”

“They’ve just come aboard now. Sir,” said Hoshi. 

Good. Jonathan flashed a quick, smiling nod and thumbs-up at Trip as Hoshi continued. “Commander T’Pol reported that…”

Her words were diminished by another windy moan.

Staggering a little in the blowing snow, Jonathan turned his back to the gusts and held the communicator close to his face. Trip moved in beside him to help shelter the small device, while brushing a flurry of flying flakes off his own goggles. 

“Damn!” he sputtered as he got a face-full of slush smeared across his cheeks from his crystal encrusted sleeve. Spitting out a mouthful of snow, he reached for Jonathan’s comm. “Let me try something here, Cap’n. I’m setting this in conjunction with the frequency band Malcolm used on that base monitor at our landing site. A chaining effect between the two might boost the gain some.”

“Ensign, adjust your settings to the following…” Jonathan said, glancing down at the series of numbers Trip had finished inputting. Taking the comm back from him, he read them aloud to his communications officer. “Is that changing the reception on your end?”

“You’re coming in a bit more clearly now, Sir. Commander T’Pol says the ionic activity in the upper atmosphere has decreased, but not enough to give you any precise indications as to how long the snowstorm will last.”

A brief smile of amusement tugged at the corner of his mouth. He was right! T’Pol had credited the ionic activity with producing that weather report. 

Some precipitation on the way! Talk about an understatement! They would definitely go over those readings in finest detail when…

Dismissing all but the most pressing part of the thought, Jonathan again shifted the small device out of the wind’s next irritable gust and raised his voice for emphasis. “When does she think we can start looking for a ride home?”

“No information on that yet, Sir. We can continue to monitor your locations through your communicators, and continue to keep you posted as to developments at fifteen minute intervals.”

“Understood.” He took a moment to survey what he could of their surroundings. Would it be wiser to improvise some sort of temporary campsite here to wait for the storm to pass, and the opportunity for the shuttle-pod to return or the transporter to gather them back to Enterprise? No, he’d stand by his earlier decision. Even without its untrustworthy coating of snow, the hill’s incline would make setting up an encampment here difficult at best. And the trees below would not only serve as windbreaks against the bluster of the raw elements, but also as sources of fuel to make a campfire by which they could warm themselves. 

“We’ll keep moving toward our original rendezvous site then. Archer out.” He   
reached for the clip on his utility belt even as he made another quick survey of their projected route and thumbed the comm into static-free silence. 

“Cap’n?” Stepping back from the small shelter they’d made for the communicator, Trip’s gaze had lifted to the sky beyond Jonathan’s shoulder. “It might just be wishful thinking on my part, but I think the snowfall’s slowing down some, and the sky’s getting brighter. Look, over there, to the west. Do you see it?”

Jonathan squinted. Was the grey really a little paler over there? Had the glow reflecting off the snow been a bit brighter? For just one moment? Maybe, but… He wasn’t sure. He shook his head. “I’m not seeing it.”

“There. A little more to the left!” There was an excited grin in Trip’s voice as he stepped forward, lifting a gloved hand to point. 

Jonathan drew a cold, eager breath and tracked the motion in the indicated direction. He shook his head. 

“Look!” Trip repeated. “See? Right over- Whoa! ”

His arms flew up into the air and his mouth dropped open in a wide, startled “O” as the snow beneath him slipped free of the ice-sheet forming beneath it. He did a slow, almost graceful pirouette in a vain attempt to keep his balance. Surprise gave way to frustrated irritation as, after a few staggering steps, he landed… flump…! on his backside with a great up-spray of powder. 

Trip glared at the huge spatters of white covering him. Irritation gave way to a look of affronted insult as he, Commander Charles Anthony Tucker the Third of Starfleet, the Chief Engineer of Earth’s first-ever Warp Five vessel, was forced to acknowledge that he’d been taken down by a clump of frozen water crystals! There he floundered and flopped, rather fish-like, getting smeared and spattered with more and more of them, forced to spit out more flaky mouthfuls of snow, trying to brush it out of his face with white-coated gloves, then needing to spit some more. 

Despite himself, Jonathan grinned, and even with snow blowing in his own face, he couldn’t keep from laughing out loud at his friend’s indignant expression. “Long way from Florida, right Trip?”

“Damnit!” Trip growled, sitting up and drawing his knees toward his chest as he prepared to get himself back to his feet. Jonathan extended a hand, but before Trip could grasp it, or raise himself more than a few inches, his boots slid out from under him and, with another billow of feathery white, he flumped back down again. There was a brief struggle that sent up even more powdery clouds, then his arms and legs splayed out in a moment of total, limp surrender as he lay on his back, staring into the white and silver sky, a reluctant grin beginning to spread itself across his face as he shook with laughter. 

“All right, on your feet, Commander!” Jonathan managed to subdue his laughter, but not his grin as, leaning forward, he again extended his hand.

“’sthat an order, Sir?” Trip laughed harder, his voice a little breathless as he sat up and reached for the offered hand.

“Parade stance, Commander!” 

“You got it, Cap’n!” 

But he didn’t. 

Trip’s gloved fingertips only brushed Jonathan’s when the snow beneath his shifting weight gave way again and he began to slide. He flailed for Jonathan’s hand, missed. Grabbed at a passing bush. Missed. Tried again, but it was already five feet behind him. Cascades of white billowed in his wake as he picked up momentum. 

“Woo who!” Despite all Trip’s futile efforts to stop his slide, Jonathan heard peels of laughter ribboning out behind him. Looking like a big kid, he sped away down the hillside. Even as he laughed, he began drawing on his Starfleet winter survival training to control, if not altogether stop, his descent. Leaning from the hips first to the right, then to the left, always into his uphill side, he pressed one hand, then the other into the snow like ski poles, taking command of his turns as he slalomed back and forth between the huddled clusters of undergrowth. Bit by bit, he began slowing and steadying his unplanned ride down the slope with strong, sure, rhythmic moves. 

Jonathan stared, took a step forward, then another, both fascinated and amazed. After all that precarious, grueling, step-by-step creeping down the hillside, why had neither of them thought to find a way of letting the snow work for, instead of against them? Starfleet training notwithstanding, someone who’d spent more time around mountains and less around coastal waters would probably have had that kind of idea a lot sooner. 

He brushed more snow off his goggles, mapped Trip’s progress. If he could lower himself down right, he could avoid that flopping fish maneuver, use his hands to push of and create a deliberate, directed momentum, then follow Trip’s already half-cleared path for a quicker, easier descent. Once he caught up with him they could reassess their position relative to the rendezvous point, contact Enterprise and…

For an instant, Trip seemed to have stopped mid-motion, then, half spinning, he went whipping sideways as something… the cloth of his jacket-sleeve or one of the straps from his backpack… Jonathan wasn’t sure which… snagged on a bush’s low branch. For half a heartbeat, Jonathan thought it might pull him up short, stop his crazy backside-slide down the hill. Instead, the branch broke, releasing Trip to a random, off-course tumble.

Jonathan hardly remembered dropping to the snow or pushing himself forward. Already he was shooting downward as sheets of flying and blowing snow took Trip in and out of his view. All he knew was that the engineer’s sure, smooth and methodical slalom run had now become an uncontrolled head-over-heels fall. 

He was off the path, rolling through wind-tossed drifts! There was no longer anything streamlined or aerodynamic about his flailing, off-course momentum. Jonathan realized he was closing the distance between the two of them, was close to catching up with him, when Trip tumbled one last time. A single loud, terrible cracking sound cut through the wine of the wind as Trip landed, sprawled out on his side. He slid a few unresisting inches and was still.

“Trip!”

No answer. No movement except the white veil of snow waving on the wind between the two of them.

Bump! Jonathan had almost reached Trip when he let himself drop hard onto his uphill side, leaning in and plowing as deep into the snow as he could to break his own momentum on the cleared path. Bump, bump! He rattled sideways across the uneven ground beneath its blanket of snow. And with one last bump, came to a stop.

“Trip! Do you hear me?”

There were only a few yards to cover. Jonathan rolled to his hands and knees and scrambled, more than half crawling, across the path. One hand forward, one knee, hand, knee… It had only been seconds, but it seemed he’d been trying to reach Trip for eternities. He grasped for a bush as he started to slide. Not now! Not now! Only a little further before he could reach…

“Trip!” He shouted into the wind, though there could not have been more than a yard separating them. Reaching forward, he just managed to brush his friend’s shoulder. “Can you hear me?”

Trip stirred. Groaned. 

“Don’t move!” Jonathan commanded as Trip lifted his head and struggled to sit up.

“Cap’n, I’m… all right.” he protested, panting, although he paused for several seconds, both obeying orders and catching his breath . “I’m fine. Just… got the… wind knocked outta me. Only… damn!”

“Trip,” Jonathan kept his voice firm as Trip again tried to sit, to turn himself over. “I need you to stay still until…”

Until he called Enterprise. Had Phlox listen as he went through the first aid protocols with Trip. Demanded some sort of estimate on when they could get out of here and…

“Cap’n,” Trip interrupted his quick run of prioritizing. “I’m fine! Only… Damn!” 

His words trailed into silence. Already his voice was sounding stronger, less winded. But for several wide-eyed and wordless seconds, he seemed to be grabbing at his side with urgent movements of a white-encrusted, gloved hand. 

Trip hadn’t injured his ribs, had he? That’d make getting the rest of the way down the uneven slope to their rendezvous point a dangerously slow and painful journey as the daylight hours faded and the temperature continued to drop. 

“Only what, Trip?” Jonathan prompted, keeping his voice command-calm.

Trip’s hand came away from his side and Jonathan realized he hadn’t been checking for injuries, but trying to tug something free from his utility belt. On a shuddering sigh, he held a grey and silver edged snow-clump out on his palm. Even through its white coating, it was easy to see the huge dent in one side and a dangling array of exposed circuitry. “I think I killed my communicator.”

Jonathan’s dismay was outweighed ten times over with relief to have his friend sitting up, shaken but fully conscious and lucid. He watched Trip thumbing here and there across the comm’s surface with a hand that still shook slightly with reaction from his fall. There was no hiss of open channel or crackle of static. No bright flicker of light from the screen or the exposed electronics. It really was quite dead. 

“Well, if anybody can resurrect it when we get back to the ship, my money’s on you.” Jonathan managed a relieved grin and reached for his own communicator. “Speaking of which, if static permits, we probably should notify…” 

He stopped. Felt in the snow beside him.

“Cap’n, what’s wrong?”

Jonathan ran his hand along his belt. He’d just been about to call the ship and now… 

“Damn it, I…”

It had to be here someplace! 

He squinted through his snow and steam smeared goggles at the snow, then groped through the whiteness, moving his hands in careful circles. Nothing.

“…can’t find…”

Had to be here!

“My communicator!”

He widened the circular movements. 

Trip’s eyebrows rose. Brushing off the heaviest clumps of snow, he maneuvered himself around until he sat facing Jonathan and automatically began to mirror his searching movements. “You were talking to Hoshi on it just a few…”

“Yes, I was…” In his mind, Jonathan was looking back up the slope. He’d been clipping it to his belt when Trip first toppled onto his backside. The carabineer fastener had snicked open between his gloved fingers! He’d felt the click, even though the small, sharp metallic sound had been obliterated by the wind. The open end had snagged on his belt loop, he’d noted its tug of resistance, and…

Had it failed to keep the contact? 

He thought he’d felt it slip into place, but…

By then, Trip was sliding, had begun tumbling and Jonathan had…

He had started down after him.

The sight of that helpless, uncontrolled falling had over-ridden the details of that memory! Tangled it with his intent just now to open a channel to Enterprise and get Phlox’s assistance!

One, two, three ever-widening circles, churning up the ever-deepening powder revealed nothing. Nothing! Which mean it could be up there…

How far up the slope was that, anyway?

…when they had last spoken with Enterprise. Or, if the clip had broken loose, it could be anywhere on, or beside the disappearing path between here and there.

He raised inquiring eyes to meet Trip’s. The engineer’s hands had stopped their circling. He was shaking his head. Jonathan’s own hands stilled. Digging in the snow was starting to numb them, even within his gloves. 

In careful stages, so he wouldn’t dislodge himself into a tumble like Trip’s, he got to his feet. Made a slow visual sweep of his surroundings, just in case… Nothing.

He extended a hand, felt the grip and tug as Trip accepted its assistance in standing. Saw his friend nod his thanks.

It had been not so long ago, at thirteen ten, Jonathan remembered, though the moment seemed eons distant, that, after signing off with Enterprise, he had commented to Trip that the two of them were on their own here.

Now he was the one who’d turned out to be speaking in understatements.

Their only working communicator was nowhere to be found.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

28 March, 2155  
Enterprise NX02  
Zero eight hundred hours, fifteen minutes

“Trip…!”

Jonathan held up a silencing hand. He began to refill his coffee cup, pausing halfway to look through the gently rising steam, not bothering to keep the exasperation from his voice. “I was with you, remember? You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know! So, what exactly happened to get us…?”

“Captain!” Trip interrupted. “Hang with me a little longer!” 

This explanation had been hard to start, but now, having bowed to the inevitable, and when at least half of him was back on that slope, he’d as soon let the tale’s momentum carry him… carry both of them… down the rest of the way. “I wanna reach the point when we lost a real sense of control over the situation. That’s what you want to know about. And I don’t mean when we lost the communicators.”

“Okay, got it.” Jonathan finished filling his cup, then held the pot out toward Trip.

“No thanks, not yet.” His own coffee was only a little over half gone, even though his cup was still circled between his hands, cradling the warmth as though every muscle still remembered the cold. He took a small, quick, hot swallow.

(What was more wonderful than the feel of heat and the soft whisper of steam tendrils caressing his cheeks?) 

The captain nodded, then set down the pot.

They’d known without discussion that it was pointless…

(Yeah, right, how about damn stupid?)

…to try and retrace their steps several hundred yards, looking for dull silver glints in fluffing grey-white powder. Better to carry on the way they were headed. Especially as the fatigue from battling through the storm began setting in. The rendezvous point was there at the bottom of the slope, along with trees tall enough to provide shelter and, if need be, firewood to get them through til the shuttle-pod returned. It would be all right. 

It really wasn’t all that far.

Wouldn’t… couldn’t… be all that far…

Hadn’t been, at least… Not before the snow blew in. 

So, if they just kept going, it couldn’t be… all… that… far. Could it?

Actually… It was becoming kind of hard to tell. 

Distances were different when steps were large, quick and sure instead of small, careful searches for solidity! When there were clear landmarks ahead and grey skies hadn’t erased the depth-defining shadows. 

But somewhere in the past half… 

(or had it been three quarters?)

…hour now, the wind had quieted some, the snowfall slowed. The slope was leveling out. The going would be easier, the rendezvous close at hand. They would stop a minute or two, gather their breath, open their packs and… 

“I don’t think,” said Trip. “Things got really difficult until after we finished off the thermos bottles. It’s amazing how knowing there was still some of that hot soup of Chef’s to look forward to helped. I kept tellin’ myself just a little further and another swallow’s there waiting. No reason I couldn’t take a few steps and then a few more…”

Again Jonathan nodded. “Right. It was a reachable goal. With that in place, you could take yourself further than you’d planned. Got it. Go on…”

“Once we reached that level ground,” Trip passed his cup from one hand to the other as he considered his words. “And the soup was gone, we needed to see those trees and estimate how far to reach them. I don’t think either of us knew until the snow stopped how far off course we’d gotten ourselves.”

Jonathan managed a small laugh. “And every landmark that we could see was out beyond that featureless expanse. No matter how far or how long we walked, those trees never seemed to get any closer. Like a mirage. Just like in that desert.”

“Except, Trip made a face. “For the cold. A shiver rippled across his shoulders.

Cold.

It was a damned pervasive thing. Gradual at first, it gnawed its way in through their boots, their gloves, their jackets and caps. With every gesture, every step, every move it re-introduced itself. For a while it was held at bay behind the metabolism-raising shield of exertion. Tough the wind’s velocity had dropped, it seemed to blow more steadily, as if determined to keep them from reaching their goal, from getting anywhere at all. The gravity seemed greater, their footsteps slower and that adrenaline heat-shield failing…

“You’re right, that’s when I began losing touch with my surroundings.” Jonathan paused, studied his memories. “I knew I’d lost track of time. With nobody to check in with, I quit looking at my chronometer. My attention was on walking, on the feeling in my feet so I wouldn’t fall. Just walking and operating mostly on automatic. No matter what, I… we… had to keep moving. Nothing beyond that seemed very real. Even when the clouds broke and we got our first sight of the sun, it could have been something out of movie night for all it mattered to me. It was almost as though I were half hallucinating.”

“Yeah. I know.” Said Trip. “Cap’n, what do you remember besides the sun?”

“I remember the cold. And the glare on the snow. Even with goggles on, it was bright. And I thought I heard you, talking and talking beside me, but the wind kept blowing the words away. I couldn’t tell if you were telling your feet to move, talking to me, or even to the ship, like you forgot your comm was dead. A couple of times I was sure I heard T’Pol’s name.”

“Yeah,” Trip nodded. “You heard me talking all right. And yelling. At first, the talking kept me moving.” 

The words, he remembered, had been signposts…

Each two or three marked another step, then another. Another. A counter-rhythm to the forward thrust of his tiring legs. Reminded him there was something more than the drive of wind against his numbing cheeks and the hollow thump, thump, thump of his stiffening boots across the unforgiving ground.

Had he ever been so cold? Even back when he and Malcolm had been adrift in Shuttle-pod Two with the life-support failing? There was no wind there to dig icy fingers into his skin and make his hands and feet ache with cold at every movement.

Until they began to burn. Then grow distant. Go numb.

Was his mind going numb too? Its focus kept shrinking like the core of warmth retreating ever deeper within his body. The only thing he could do was to keep moving. Him and the cap’n. Another step, another and another without stopping, if they had any chance of making it to the trees, those damn drifting, distant trees. Of making it to the shuttle-pod, to the ship, to…

“T’Pol!” 

He hadn’t believed he’d heard it right the first time her name sounded. He’d been thinking of her and… 

He didn’t know why he was shouting when she was nowhere nearby. Only that her name rose from a tearing place in his chest.

She wasn’t part of the dissolving warmth, or the faltering belief they would ever get to shelter. But her name conjured that beautiful face. 

If there was anything out beyond the cold, beyond the edge of his physical endurance, it was wanting to see that face… find the secret warmth in her eyes that shone there only when she looked at him. The warmth that beckoned, demanding he take one more step, one more, one more… Both he… and the cap’n. Jonathan’s arm was around his back, holding on, the same way he was hugging the captain’s waist for support and balance as they staggered toward T’Pol through the drifts.

She was dressed in the colors of snow-dazzle. “T’Pol! We’re… coming!”

If he could tell her that, then take another step, he could convince himself it was true. Convince her, too, even if she sensed, as he did, something in their bond was blurring as his consciousness narrowed. 

Man, this really was a long, long way from Florida! 

A long way from the warm embrace of T’Pol.

Had he managed to tell her how much he loved her? How much these last few secret months had meant to him? The nights in her quarters? Their time on Vulcan? God, he hoped she had heard him through their bond when he’d been shouting before, because he’d really, really wanted her to know and… 

Wait! The idea came quick and blazing clear, drawing him up with a stiff-limbed start that almost sent him toppling and the cap’n right along with him.

He wasn’t reliably good at sending her words yet, not without touching her. If he had been, maybe he’d have thought of trying it before now. Back… when he could… 

Think, Tucker, damn it, think! 

…could still think in sentences that didn’t keep on trying to break up in the middle!

But if he stared hard at where he was going… Well, she’d been here too, hadn’t she…? Back when they landed! She might recognize something! 

She’d told him that, on Algeiba last fall, his mind had been calling out, trying to find the captain, and her thoughts had picked it up. Because of the concussion he’d sustained, he had no memory of the event except what she had shared with him, but he recognized that his had been undirected thinking then, and unfocused intent! It was before he’d known about the bond between them! But now… If he thought to her, spoke to her in his mind as if he was talking, maybe… 

His head dropped forward onto his chest. He jerked it upright, staggered, held as tight to the cap’n as his hollow hands would allow. 

“Listen, T’Pol! We’re way off course! But I know we kept the clouds… on our left all the time we… were climbing… to the hilltop… back as the storm came in…” 

Was he shouting? It didn’t sound like much more than a croak from a hoarse throat. And the words sounded so funny, coming from numb, stiff lips! 

Would they sound funny in her mind, too?

Oh, T’Pol, damn it, please hear me! Please, please, hear me!

“So the wind was comin’… from our right… on our way down. It… still is… comin’ that way. So we’re… Lemmee think. Right…! We’re goin’ south!”

Good direction, South… Toward home. Toward Florida! All that hot, hot sun shinin’ down,-bright, real bright… across all those long, long stretches of sand… 

Those sweet, golden gulf shore breezes were whispering secrets to his hollow feet and his hard, stiff muscles that he’d damn well better not listen to! They were lies. Survival training said warmth was a lie right now. Warm was death. For him and for the cap’n…

Only the warmth in T’Pol’s amber eyes was truth. It was out ahead of his footsteps if he could… just… keep… them… going. One foot, two foot, his foot, cap’n’s foot. 

He didn’t know any more if he was shouting to her on the wind, or was speaking to her in silence.

“Can you see the trees? Bare trees? We landed by them… One with three forks in the branches… Might be that one a little to the left, see…? No… I think… Think it’s ahead of us. Keeps movin’ away, drifting, like mirages, but I think they’re all real. 

“Can’t tell how far away though. Shadows should stop ‘em drifting’… help keep ‘em straight ahead, but… Hard to look… Hard to see… White sun dazzling to yellow- pink on all the snowdrifts. Almost pretty if it didn’t hurt my eyes so damn bad. Even with the goggles it hurts… 

“My… my feet feel like they’re made out of wood. Really more like they don’t feel anything much at all! Sure can’t seem to keep ‘em movin’ in a straight line… I… I do keep thinking I can hear them thumping along down there underneath me though… 

“Weird, how cold, cold air has such a good smell to it… Maybe you’d like it. Kind of bitter but clean… Ozone, maybe… And it sounds so crystal sharp here, even through wind. Kind of hollow… 

“I’ve quit shivering now. I think… it was survival training… said it’s not good to stop shivering. But maybe they meant that only when you’re still getting colder. I think I haven’t been getting colder for a while now… 

“Could almost say I feel… Warm… warm, like in your arms… Could rest in your arms… Could lay snug in your arms… Could… love you in my arms…”

“Trip…!” Jonathan’s voice jerked him free of the memory. 

For a moment, Trip’s head reeled. The captain’s ready room seemed dark and dim after the dazzling sun-on-snow brightness, the air flat and strangely lifeless after the steady, strong press of the wind.

He blinked. Felt a brief shiver ripple across his shoulders, then fade. This wasn’t Al Averon. That had been four days ago. All that remained was the last residue of fatigue in muscles that had been rigid-cold for hours, the redness of chapped fingers and wind-burned cheeks and the question that lay between him and Jonathan, at the heart of their shared memories. 

The captain’s gaze was intent, his coffee cup set aside to cool, forgotten, as he leaned forward, arms resting on the desk. “Trip, from every report I’ve read, we had no working communicators. The ionization wouldn’t allow anything even as small as a shuttle-pod to show up on sensors, and you’re trying to tell me the ship’s transporter was able to lock on our position because you told T’Pol where we were through what… a mind meld?”

God, it would be so tempting to shrug a shoulder, quirk a grin, find a casual tone and try to strike a friendly bargain. “Off the record, right?”

But it was a compromise he wouldn’t make. 

It would be disrespecting his long friendship with the cap’n, as well as the pure and direct beauty of the relationship he and T’Pol had tried so long to achieve. He thought he’d bowed to the inevitable when he began talking about Al Averon. But at the lifting of the captain’s brows and rising note of incredulity in Jonathan’s tone and the tightness in his own gut, Trip knew he’d still been fighting the need to do so. Maybe the captain would have read something into his description of events that would allow him to let the matter drop with…

Well, without going into what enabled T’Pol to recognize their surroundings through his eyes and guide their staggering steps to the shuttle-pod’s precise landing coordinates.  
That he’d still been hoping to keep that private, more for the sake of its ramifications for T’Pol and her career, than for his own. 

But then, for reasons that mirrored his own, she would neither want, or expect him to make that compromise either. 

 

He sighed, swallowed, then met his old friend’s eyes.

“Yeah… that’s just what I’m telling you.”

“I’m listening.”

“It was through our bond.”

“Our… bond?” The captain’s brows rose still higher.

Trip almost laughed at his look of quizzical confusion. That helped. 

This was Jonathan he was talking to. His best friend. Whatever professional consequences the captain had to impose on him because of what he was about to say, after it was done, Jonathan would still be that same old friend he had always been. 

“No, Cap’n! The telepathic bond… between T’Pol and me.”

“Go on.”

“Okay. Remember when the three Orion girls came on board with all those pheromones of theirs an’ you wondered why T’Pol and I were the only ones who were the only ones immune to their effect? That’s when we realized we were…”

He searched for a word to explain. Linked? Melded? Mated? None of them were satisfactory. He sighed. Set his cup aside and at last gave the inevitable a full, deep bow.

“For this to make sense, I’d better take you back a ways. To last year… Back when we were in the Expanse…”


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

28 March, 2155  
Enterprise NX01  
Zero eight hundred hours, twenty five minutes

“Hoshi, put me through to Captain Hernandez.”

Jonathan watched the door slide shut behind Trip’s retreating back and reached for his almost empty coffee cup, then added, “And… on a secured channel if you don’t mind.”

“Sir?”

He heard the note of concern in her tone and hastened an automatic reassurance. “Not an emergency of any kind, Ensign.”

Even on audio only he knew her delicate eyebrows were arching, that the slight hesitation was a fleeting exchange of glances with Travis or Malcolm.

He allowed a smile to broadcast itself in his tone, echoing to all of them his own recollection this morning that, even these days, not everything out here had to do with Romulans. “Contact me when you reach her.”

It would, he knew, be at least several minutes before Enterprise received her response.

As the smile faded, he settled back in his chair. After talking about those hours on Al Averon VI, it was amazing how, even after four days, his bones could still sing with grateful recognition that the bitter cold was only a fading memory.

Too bad he couldn’t say the same for Trip’s description of their last desperate minutes there, or for the set of complications his words had presented.

On the surface, the regulations addressing them were black and white. But the underlying situation was anything but!

Kind of like the bet with Erika.

There it was again- that circle from Trip to Erika… And from Erika, back to Trip…

He suppressed a soft, ironic groan.

That bet about Trip, requesting a transfer because of a woman.

Not quite casual, it had been half joke, half antidote to Romulans, moving from awkward to intriguing as he spotted the challenging sparkle in Erika’s vivid eyes. Now it had become… troubling.

That bet he wasn’t sure whether he had won or lost.

No, that wasn’t black and white either.

Melded! Trip had said. Telepathically linked! Bonded!

He stared at the closed door as if he could find a definition for each concept written on its smooth surface that would not reopen any conflict between command and conscience.

Melded? He’d known about the connecting ability of Vulcan minds since the V’Tosh Ka’tur visited Enterprise early in her mission.

Telepathically linked? He himself had melded with the living spirit of Surak on Vulcan’s Forge, and through him, later helped T’Pol initiate a connection with Hoshi when Phlox had been kidnapped.

But… Bonded?

T’Pol had linked with Trip to access his concussion-damaged memories in the Algeiba mines. Reading T’Pol’s report of their combined efforts to effect his own rescue, had deepened his appreciation for the agility and reach of her mind, but caused him to assume Trip’s telepathic experience was similar to his own.

Until a few minutes ago.

Jonathan hadn’t been sure if the memory of his friend shouting T’Pol’s name into the gusting wind when there was no communicator to hail her with, was real. It could’ve been delirium, either his own or Trip’s.

But Trip’s voice erased any illusions with its absolute conviction. “Once I thought to show her, T’Pol could recognize our location relative to where the shuttle-pod landed. She kept sending images back to me, steering us toward those coordinates, so Malcolm could transport us back to the ship.”

“She…? Sent you images?”

Syran had to touch his face to transfer Surak’s katra. T’Pol’s searching fingers had traced Hoshi’s cheek for the psi points to establish their link. But… Sent?

Trip hadn’t seemed to notice Jonathan’s confusion. “Images is the best way I can put it. Saying it was between pictures and words is maybe clearer. I could give you a better description if I wasn’t so out of it with hypothermia.”

Had what he and Surak shared been images? Words? On reflection, Jonathan decided, it had been something between the two… or a bit of both. Except that…

“Trip! You and I were on the planet. T’Pol was…”

“Yeah. On the ship. I know.” Emotions kaleidoscoped in Trip’s eyes. He looked like he might rise, pace, search the corners of the room for the words he was struggling to find. Then, his shoulders relaxed and the tautness in his features gave way to what Jonathan recognized as relief. “Melding’s different… when there’s a bond.”

“A bond? Between you and T’Pol?”

Damn! He hadn’t meant to sound so incredulous!

Of course there was a bond! As parents, there always would be. The realization that lanced through him was followed by a rush of impotent rage on their behalf over what Terra Prime had put them through. “You mean… Because of Elizabeth?”

“No. But she’s become a big part of what was already there. It began before we knew about her. When we were in the Expanse…”

A faint flush brightened the last traces of wind-burn on his cheeks. Half reluctant amusement tugged at Jonathan’s mouth. It was a long time since he’d seen anything resembling that expression. For a crazy, wonderful, terrible moment, he thought Trip would burst out with his “I was a perfect gentleman!” line. It was a carefree memory from a simpler time that somehow seemed closer than it would have done before that talk with Erika an hour ago.

Though something in Trip’s tone was stirring a vague storm warning in Jonathan’s gut, he’d had to bless the absolute brilliance of that crazy bet of hers.

How long was it since he’d recalled his early days on Enterprise as anything but the bittersweet visions of an untried idealist? Sat down for a meeting with a member of his crew to discuss anything but strategies? Or gone an hour on duty without talking or even so much as thinking, about the Romulan threat?

Despite that hint of apprehension, he was grateful that, whatever he was about to face, for a change it was nothing to do with the Romulans.

He’d given Trip’s flush a few seconds to fade. “Go on,” he said.

Trip nodded. “I’d feel better if T’Pol was here to have a voice in this. But you know us both, Cap’n. I trust your judgment on how to handle what I’m gonna say.”

That wasn’t a beginning designed to impart reassurance. Jonathan braced himself as he leaned a little forward in his chair. He’d read Phlox’s recommendations, early in their time in the Expanse, that Trip undergo Vulcan neuropressure for insomnia, but was unprepared for the sudden husky timbre of Trip’s voice, even less for his words. “During our time in the Expanse, T’Pol and I became… intimate.”

Intimate! Damn it! They were both senior officers! They knew the rules on that kind of fraternization!

“And just how long were you… intimate?”

Was the anger in his tone meant for the officer who should’ve known better than to ignore regulations or the friends who gave no hint of what had happened between them?

Trip stiffened, his words cool and deliberate. Protective. Of T’Pol more than himself, Jonathan was sure. “If that part’s any of your business, Captain, it was for one night.”

“Sorry, Trip, I had no right to bark at you that way.”

Especially, he’d realized, because the anger was less about whatever comfort Trip and T’Pol might have drawn from each other in the hellish months they’d spent out there, than about its contrast with the abrupt ending of the relationship that had been blossoming between himself and Erika, back in ‘51. About the cold inevitability he’d experienced as they’d turned and walked in opposite directions along that San Francisco pier, just days after he’d been promoted to captain.

Anger driven by the sharp thrusts of loss and envy.

An hour ago, he’d asked himself whether he and Erika had sacrificed too much for their careers…

Why hadn’t he proposed they put the romance part of their relationship on hold after his promotion? They could have concentrated on keeping the friendship intact for the time being, instead of just walking away without so much as a backward glance. From their first meeting, they had created a wonderful synergy between them, built on each other’s thoughts, caught each other’s humor, been such natural and understanding confidants. What insanity had allowed him to believe, even for a moment, it could be all-or-nothing, black-and-white between them?

He could still hear the words she had spoken after the Xindi mission.

Like you, I’m married to Starfleet.

But was she, still? Were either of them? Really?

…He hadn’t expected the painful question to demand his attention again so soon. But there it was. Had they…? Given up too much?

“How’d you ever survive without me all these years?”

Good question!

She’d asked him that later, after Enterprise and Columbia together effected Phlox’s rescue. Said it with that teasing smile of hers lighting those vivid dark eyes. The old, bantering humor of long acquaintance had been clear in her voice for everybody present to hear. But had there been more in her lilting words than that? Had it been as hard for her to turn and head back to her ship that day as it had been for him to watch her go?

Was that the moment when the restlessness began? Some of the shiny idealism of his early days commanding Enterprise had been tarnished by his time in the Expanse, by what the desperation to save Earth from the Xindi had driven him to. But even then, he hadn’t been so aware of the loneliness… the ongoing sense of isolation that so often came with sitting in the captain’s chair.

If… No, when! …the Romulans were defeated, what was there to look forward to? Another promotion? An admiral’s desk? An ambassadorial posting somewhere within the Coalition? After a day reading reports or an evening wining and dining dignitaries, would he go home alone to silent and empty quarters?

Trip, he’d realized, was shrugging off his apology. The sudden anger in his blue eyes had faded. “Yeah, you had the right. You’re the cap’n, and we both know the regulations. So did T’Pol and I.”

“Trip, I can hardly hand down a reprimand for something that happened a year ago. Especially considering what we all lived through out there, wondering if we’d even have a world to come home to. During that mission, the two of you continued working together as efficiently as you always had, without any indication of a change in…”

“Well,” Trip interrupted, with a small and rueful smile. “Actually, we told ourselves that nothing real had happened. I almost managed to convince myself for a while. Managed to stay focused on the mission, anyway. Then, later, when you and T’Pol came back from Vulcan’s Forge, all of a sudden I couldn’t shake the feeling there was still some kind of connection between us.”

Still some kind of connection! Right.

Jonathan got that. If he closed his eyes, it could be happening all over again…

Erika, so warm in his arms as they lay, wrapped tight around each other in the crisp mountain air, a thousand stars reflected in her eyes as she looked up at him, her long hair tumbled around her face, a dark halo on the grass.

Intimate…

Not trusting his voice, he gestured Trip to go on.

“Then I couldn’t get her outta my head. I guess I know now what they mean by ‘driven to distraction’.”

So yes, there had been indications then! At last that strange, painful encounter from last fall began to make sense. Trip, standing uneasy in the doorway after working with Phlox and Jhamel on the telepresence device, his harsh self-evaluation and the bitterness in his words “my mind wasn’t on the job…” and then that uncharacteristic and unexplained demand to transfer to Captain Hernandez’s command on Columbia…

Right. Columbia… Erika’s Columbia!

There it went again, another round of the circle, this time Trip to Erika…

And why not? Jonathan asked himself. There were few people living who had shared more history with him through the years, fewer still who’d known him so well or meant so much to him. Trip, his long-time best friend. Erika, his…

Who, exactly, was Erika to him now? Who did he wish her to be?

Talking with her this morning had reminded him that there was more to his life than reviewing Science, Engineering and Armory reports and preparing for the possibility of new Romulan invasions. That there was more to him than his role as captain of Enterprise. Or that there could be… Maybe.

Was Erika really married only to Starfleet?

She was so full of humor and compassion, directness and subtlety. Both in and out of uniform, she was so simply and consistently Erika! Her embraces had been so full of sureness during those mountainside moments when it was her confidence and strength that he’d needed most, so tender when it was simple peace that he sought.

How’d you ever survive without me…?

There had been the faint aroma of something botanical on her skin, in her hair… Lavender? Rosemary maybe? He wasn’t particularly knowledgeable about plants, but he’d remember that scent. Would always recognize it as Erika’s…

“I,” Trip was saying. “Thought going to Columbia would help me quit thinking about her. Or at least help me with doing my job right.”

“And then?”

Talk about driven to distraction!

Jonathan forced his attention back to what Trip was saying. It was less a question than a prompt to continue. He knew the answer, or at least part of it. Trip had transferred back to Enterprise, after all.

“I didn’t know T’Pau had cured T’Pol’s Pa’nar Syndrome, or that it was a condition that blocked natural Vulcan telepathy. Probably should have noticed something was different when she linked with me the way she did on Algeiba, but…”

Jonathan had to laugh, though it did little to ease the tightness in his gut. “It would probably have been easier for you to do that if you’d actually remembered anything about what happened there.”

Trip chuckled. “Good point. It was when the Orion girls came on board with all those crazy pheromones that we figured out what had happened. T’Pol’s physiology made her immune to their effects, and she telepathically shared that immunity with me.”

“And it’s a good thing she did!” Jonathan exclaimed, all traces of his earlier distraction were gone.

What an understatement! He almost winced, remembering. Because of the pheromones’ intoxicating influence, he’d almost surrendered command of Enterprise to those devious, slinky, scantily dressed Orion girls! “But, Trip, with all due respect, why in particular was it that she picked you to pass the immunity to?”

“She didn’t pick. The telepathic link was formed that night we shared in the Expanse. It lay dormant until T’Pol’s being cured of Pa’nar activated our bond.”

“You keep using that word, Trip! Bond! What am I not understanding here?”

The last of the tension between the two of them for weeks seemed to stretch the seconds as Trip’s features tightened with inner struggle. He took a deep breath, as, after  
a moment, the last wall gave way, the uneasy mask shattered leaving only the naked trust of friendship gained over many years. Leaning forward, he met Jonathan’s gaze. “It’s an ongoing mental connection that happens when… a couple… is… mated.”

It was a good thing that he hadn’t gone for another swallow of coffee just then, Jonathan decided. His startled, indrawn gasp would have had him coughing and spluttering all over the place.

That surprise was still there, even after Trip had gone, echoing in his bones, much more strongly than the memory of the Al Averon cold.

Mated! For Trip and T’Pol it had begun as an affirmation of survival amid the constant dangers of the Expanse. One that, regulations or not, could be overlooked, just as a case might be made for that shore-leave he himself had taken with Erika when the exhausted, battle-weary crew of Enterprise at last reached home…

(What happens on the mountain… stays on the mountain!)

No! He hadn’t wanted to go there!

The issue, the focus of the discussion was supposed to be two of his officers and a condition, a psychological and physical connection, recognized and accepted by both Trip and T’Pol. One that, when they’d taken their daughter’s katra to Vulcan, they had committed themselves to continuing, despite Starfleet’s non-fraternization regulations.

On Earth, that commitment would have signified not just a relationship, but, even though it had been unwitnessed and unrecorded by any legal authority, would still have constituted a marriage.

Which brought him to the heart of the issue.

Right. And wasn’t that an ironic turn of phrase under the circumstances, when happenings within the heart were something the code of regulations didn’t recognize?

They may have been intended, centuries ago, to maintain discipline, stop a senior officer from taking advantage of a junior in any of a hundred ways. But the longer he served in Starfleet, especially living for months as part of a small community in the isolation of deep space, he began to sense the code was flawed, reducing some conflicts, but creating others. It esteemed loyalty, but regarded other depths of feelings as subject to dismissal through simple acts of will, conversely considering those same emotional ties as so powerful they would, by their nature, compromise diligent attention to duty.

They were the same regulations that could make command such a lonely business, the same ones that he’d been questioning his own earlier reaction to, only a little while ago in regard to…

“Ensign Sato to Captain Archer.”

She had reached Erika!

“Archer here. Go ahead, Ensign…” Jonathan drew a deep breath. “Put her through.”

“Captain?” Erika’s face appeared on the monitor. No orange juice or banana pancakes in evidence this time. Though she was still in her Mess, they had been replaced by a pile of PADDs of the same make and model as the stack near his own hand: reports, he was sure, from Science, Engineering, Security, maybe Linguistics… The mug with the panting hiker was still present however.

Jonathan glanced at the two slump-winged eagles on his own coffee mug.

What happens on the mountain….

She was studying him, her dark eyes wide under questioning brows, her lips slightly parted in an expression of waiting. Beneath the carefully formal greeting, he could see her almost preparing to smile, to pick up their earlier conversation right where it left off, but also ready to snap back into full command mode. Just in case…

Maybe purely casual contacts couldn’t be assumed, but it would only take the glimmer of a smile to reassure her that this was one.

Or at least, he hoped, something that would approximate one.

“Erika,” he acknowledged, quirking a corner of his mouth. The set of her shoulders eased, though her gaze remained lasered to his, steady and expectant.

He had wanted this conversation to be casual, even fun… the bet conceded, the mystery of Trip’s transfer solved and the only question left to settle being the name of the best restaurant in San Francisco. It probably would have been, if he hadn’t had to contend with the situation of his two senior officers… his two close friends while searching out an answer to Erika’s question about Trip’s transfer.

The one whose answer had led him…

Why should he have expected anything else this morning?

…back, with an even larger question, to Erika!

How was he to deal with a relationship that had evolved, despite regulations, when an affirmation of survival was desperately needed, a sweet moment out of time for healing and comfort in the midst of terrible grief and uncertainty?

Unless he was prepared to be the worst of hypocrites, who was he to question the validity… the absolute value… of that joining?

After that first jolt of surprise, he’d realized he had few qualms about declaring the conversation with Trip about his and T’Pol’s relationship as being off the record, a talk between old and trusting friends, not officers.

“This isn’t going in any report to Starfleet, Trip. Or in my personal logs.” He’d even smiled then, though already the ramifications of what he was doing had made his heart thunder in his chest. It had been good to look into Trip’s open, honest face and find there was no longer any trace of that odd, low, thrumming tension between them. He caught an old familiar note of humor creeping into his tone. “I think it would be fitting to classify this entire incident under the climbers code.”

“The…what?” Baffled curiosity held Trip from settling back into his chair with relief.

A grin had spread itself across Jonathan’s face. The sense of wearying isolation had lightened a little more, as it had begun to do while talking with Erika. Despite the uncomfortable associations the phrase was raising about his next conversation with her, it was too appropriate not to apply to the current circumstance. After all, hadn’t the questions that gave rise to this discussion begun to surface as he and Trip worked their way down those cold, snow-swept slopes on Al Averon? “You know, Trip? The climbers’ code? What happens on the mountain…”

Erika was leaning a little closer to the monitor, intrigue sharpening her gaze. “Well?” she demanded, a note of teasing in her tone. “Not looking for wiggle-room, are you?”

Damn it! She had almost always been able to read him like a book!  
Though she wouldn’t know the reason, still the discomfort must have shone in his face. He wished he could dismiss the whole fraternization issue by telling himself Trip and T’Pol’s bond was an accident, beyond their choice or control. Not in terms the record. He felt fine about that. But for himself. It would make this moment less awkward. Less risky…

But it was complete nonsense. If they’d wished to break their bond badly enough, they’d have sought a remedy on Vulcan. Instead, they’d committed themselves to nurturing it, to looking toward a future together, whatever it might bring!

“Jonathan?” Erika’s questioning brows rose higher as she cupped her chin in her hand.

Leaning forward, he rounded his eyes as he returned her gaze. God, he hoped he was managing to put his hesitation across as a mere attempt to prolong the suspense of the wager. He still needed a minute to think…

Hell! A minute? He wasn’t sure an hour, a week, a decade would be enough to sort this through to a meaningful conclusion!

How, in all good conscience, could he have reprimanded Trip and T’Pol for their relationship in the Expanse when it had brought Trip through the grief of his sister’s death and T’Pol, through her addiction to Trellium-D? Not to mention how, on Al Averon, their bond had very likely saved both his and Trip’s life?

And when he…?

Damn it!

…when he looked at Erika and wished something similar for the two of them!

There it was!

The unnamed realization that had pressed on his heart and fueled his sense of strain, isolation and emptiness, not only these last weeks, but ever since a hand had touched his shoulder one night in San Francisco, almost a year ago, and a voice had murmured close to his ear that heroes were supposed to sit, not at the bar, but at the tables.

It had been more than an impulsive idea to contact her this morning. It was the unvoiced recognition of the growing knowledge that he needed the connection with her. And more… That he wanted to think of himself as not only married to Starfleet but…

That he wanted a future with Erika!

Of course, even if she felt the same way, there could be no certainty of having that future. Not with both of them preparing for what was sure to be another Romulan attack. But the idea filled him with a renewed sense of excitement… of hope… even stronger than that which had filled his words at the Coalition Conference several weeks ago.

It could give them both something solid and strong to look forward to beyond the battle to come…

If, that was, she did feel the same way.

He’d have to ask her. Find a time, a place, to sound her out on the notion. He found himself grinning as the perfect idea of how to do that began to form itself.

Erika’s fingers drummed a dramatic tattoo on her cheek. “Erika to Jonathan!”

But first, there was something more immediate the two of them must address. And it might just fit in with his evolving plan!

Jonathan cleared his throat. “Erika… About our bet…”

“Well?” She repeated. “Did you find out anything?”

“Trip just left.”

“And…?” The word was drawn out on a rising note. Holding up her free hand, Erika crooked her index finger, made tiny, beckoning motions. “All right, Captain, come on. Give over. Was I right, or was I right?”

Yes, he realized. Something inside him had definitely eased. Jonathan couldn’t look at those mischievous eyes, the not quite suppressed laughter freeing them for the moment from the tired shadows of command, and manage to contain a grin. “All right. You win. It was a woman. Dinner at the Blue Pearl next time we’re in San Francisco.”

Erika’s eyes crinkled at the corners. She couldn’t quite keep the delight of victory out of her tone. Not, he was sure, that she was trying all that hard. “I’m not going to say I told you so, but…” she paused for effect. “Well? Is it going to be salmon steaks with lemon dill sauce?”

He nodded.

“Shrimp and cucumber cocktail?”

Another nod.

Erika’s large, dark eyes sparkled. “Don’t forget the citrus mousse!”

He was laughing now, too. “And the mousse.”

She sighed, long and luxurious. Her eyes closed and, for a moment he knew she was already having herself a good sample of at least one of those courses, before her attention returned to the business at hand. “Poor Commander Tucker. Do you think he’s fully recovered now from that distracting case of unrequited love?”

“Well, about that part of the bet…”

“Jonathan!” Erika’s eyes popped open. Her tone held a mix of intrigue and amusement. “You did say it was a woman. So… What is it you are holding out on me?”

“Well, it wasn’t unrequited.”

“Oh.” Erika frowned. The shadows of command were still there beneath her eyes after all, only now becoming visible again as her amusement faded to something that looked like sadness… or regret. He thought he saw a shiver ripple her shoulders as she bit back a sigh. “Have they…” Her words were formed with slow and deliberate care.  
“Found a way to resolve their situation?”

Was she, he wondered, reliving that sharp lift of bone-biting night breezes off the water and seeing lights strung like cold diamonds along the San Francisco Bay? Remembering the long, mournful wails of foghorns serving as lonely accompaniment to the sound of fading footsteps along the pier? Or the words that had “resolved” their own situation in a very different manner after he’d been promoted to captain?

He blinked. Dissolved the memory.

“They have.” He hesitated for the count of two, three, four, gave her the ghost of a grin and wagered with himself that this was the ideal moment to set in motion something that might, just might, offer both him and Erika a nurturing strength with which to face the future, a hope beyond conflict to come, a second chance. “In a manner of speaking.”

“Good.” The word was quick, emphatic. Was that a hint of relief in her voice? He didn’t think it accidental that she hadn’t asked “How did you handle it?” which, as a fellow captain, she would have been within her rights to do. Instead, her expression thoughtful, she studied him across the light-years. Little by little, her eyes widened.

She’d almost always been able to read him like a book. Was she doing it now?

She nodded to herself, the movement firm and decisive, full of memory and understanding. “I’m glad that the… situation… could be resolved,” she said, though he was certain… almost certain anyway… that she was no longer thinking of Commander Tucker and the unknown woman who loved him as much as he loved her. A moment later, her considering look disappeared beneath a grin that echoed his own. “And you aren’t going to tell me how, are you?”

“No. At least, not right now. Later on, I just might do that. First though, I think, since it turns out we both had part of Trip’s story right, we need a little re-negotiation on the terms of our wager. I think you said that if I won, I could choose something we could do to celebrate that victory?”

Above the hand that again cupped her chin, her grin widened, her gaze warming and brightening with eager curiosity, though she managed to get that wonderful familiar note of casual banter back into her voice. “All right. So, what do you have in mind?”

“Well, Erika,” Jonathan was amazed to realize all of his old hopeful enthusiasm hadn’t been left behind in the Expanse after all. “I’ve got this idea to follow up on after the citrus mousse. How about, after dinner, we pack our stuff and take ourselves on another little climbing trip up that mountain?”


End file.
